


New Creatures With New Hearts

by natsinator



Series: In the Shadow of Heaven [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:07:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 52,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28398189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/natsinator/pseuds/natsinator
Summary: Yan BarCarran is the orphan daughter of a spacefaring clan, about to graduate from the school where people with the rare God-given power are sent to train. The next phase in her life is the apprenticeship, where she will begin her lifelong career. She’s hoping for a research position, but that's not what she gets.Aymon Sandreas is the Voice of the Empire, wielding the unfettered power that being a theocratic dictator provides. But he’s getting older, and he needs to choose a successor. He needs someone that he can shape into a leader: someone who will carry on the tradition, someone who will be able to make difficult, correct decisions, and someone he can bear to spend the rest of his mortal life working with. He picks three students as potential leaders: the talented and thoughtful Yan, the impulsive and striving Sid , and the mysterious and troubled Kino. Only one of them will survive their apprenticeship to take his place.Yan’s life spirals into chaos. Her best friend, Sylva, is in love with her; she can’t make her new coworkers get along; she hates the man who is supposed to train her to survive assassination; and above all, she's learning how large of a burden it is to keep the machine of Empire running.
Series: In the Shadow of Heaven [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2079846
Comments: 3
Kudos: 4





	1. Parent-Teacher Conferences

**Author's Note:**

> This is a complete rewrite of the first act of my web serial, In the Shadow of Heaven. Some continuity has been changed from the original version, which can be read in its entirety at bit.ly/shadowofheaven

Yan jammed her hands in the pockets of her long cassock as she stared dolefully out the huge window in the viewing area of the airport. The tiny shuttle off the  _ Iron Dreams _ made a bit of a wobbly landing and taxied away towards the storage area. Her best friend, Sylva gently elbowed Yan’s side.

“It’s like you’re not excited to see your family, or something,” Sylva said. “I think they’re nice people.” 

“It’s just awkward,” Yan said. “It’s not like anybody else’s family is here.” Although Yan was grateful for the opportunity to see her family, she felt odd that it was only her family who would be around. Most students’ families did not have the travel authorization or money to take interplanetary trips, even for such an occasion as graduation.

Sylva grinned broadly. “I told mine that they weren’t allowed to come to the ceremony.” Sylva was a native of Emerri, the capital planet, and thus her family could take merely an airplane ride to visit her at any point.

“That might actually be true,” Yan said. After all, it wasn’t like Academy students were given tickets to hand out for graduation— it was an intensely private affair. Yan figured that her family wasn’t going to stay for long; they had business to attend to, and graduation itself was still a while away, after apprenticeship interviews. The thought of those upcoming interviews churned Yan’s stomach.

“Spacers get to break all the rules,” Sylva said with another smile. “Come on, we’d better go meet them.”

Sylva bounded away deeper into the airport, and Yan had to walk uncomfortably quickly to catch up with her, even on her much longer legs. Sylva was short and chubby, with auburn hair braided in an elaborate crown around her head, and a fierce scattering of freckles across her round face.

Yan was the opposite to Sylva in every way possible. As a spacer, she had grown up with low and constantly fluctuating gravity, which had stretched her out to over two meters in height. She had brown skin and was gangly and slim, moving with an awkwardness that made her look perpetually out of place. Her thick and curly black hair was cut very close to her head. Above her low cheekbones were wide set brown eyes, always flicking around with a tight, observational nervousness.

The only thing that marked the two young women as peers were the black, ankle length cassocks that they both wore, and the shiny lapel pin that labeled them as seniors at the Academy, about to complete their tenth year. They were both twenty, and they had been best friends since their first days at the Academy, when they had been assigned beds next to each other in the first year dorms. Yan, who stood head and shoulders above the rest of the new students, and who didn’t speak the Academy’s language of New Imperial, had somehow been adopted by the exuberant Sylva. She had taken one look at the weird girl who collected ugly rocks and plants from the ground and decided that they were going to get along.

The guest waiting area in this section of the airport was empty. No big flights had come in and deposited their passengers in at least twenty minutes, so when Yan’s uncle and cousin stepped in through the doors, they had relative privacy to meet with Yan and Sylva. Yan smiled with a mixture of relief (that more of her family hadn’t crammed themselves into the shuttle to come down) and awkwardness (that it was these two family members in particular who had come to see her).

Before Yan could even say anything in greeting, her uncle Maxes had swept her up in a crushing hug. He was even taller than she was, and his long, braided hair full of colorful beads rattled in her ears. “I’ve missed you,” he said, giving her a squeeze, then releasing her.

“It’s good to see you,” she said, stiff and hesitant. She always felt the relationship between herself and her uncle had been filled with a tension she could never articulate. He wanted her to be the best of the family; she just wanted to be part of the family.

Sylva was shaking hands with Yan’s cousin, Captain Pellon, when Yan was finally able to turn to look at them. “It’s nice to see you again, Captain BarCarran,” Sylva said.

“Please, just Pellon. I think I already told you that,” he said with a smile. Pellon looked similar to Maxes in terms of facial structure, but he kept his head shaved and wore a neatly trimmed black beard instead. He was old enough that little peppers of white showed in it, and wrinkles bloomed from the corners of his eyes. He usually wore glasses, but wasn’t wearing them now.

“You did tell me that; I’m just used to calling all the masters by their last names,” Sylva said with a laugh.

Pellon turned to Yan, whose back unconsciously straightened as she addressed her captain. There was a certain aura of authority that he had, something Yan felt strongly, as she had grown up with his word being the just and absolute law aboard their ship. “How have you been, Yan?” he asked, his voice gentle.

“I’ve been well, thank you,” she said, though she felt like she was tripping over the words. She needed to smile pleasantly, seem genuine.

“School going alright?” he asked.

“It’s done,” she said. “It would have been awkward if you came while I was still taking finals and making my final project.”

“Do you have your grades?”

“Yeah, I did fine,” Yan said. She ran her hand over the back of her neck and looked away. Sylva was staring out the window, not wanting to interrupt the family conversation, but she was certainly listening in.

Pellon smiled, taking that as the deflection from bragging that it was. “That’s good to hear.”

“Are you staying on Emerri for long?” 

Pellon sighed. “Just for a couple days. We wanted to see you, obviously, but there’s business that needs attending to.” The fact that he didn’t say anything else told Yan that he had no further interest in discussing it, so, although she was curious, she didn’t press the matter.

“Should we take this out of the airport?” Maxes asked.

“Sure, follow me,” Sylva said. “I borrowed an Academy car.”

Maxes and Pellon glanced at each other, then followed Sylva to the car, with Yan walking at Maxes’s side. 

Sylva pulled them out of the airport lot, careful but a little too quick of a driver. The warm late-spring sunset lit the interior of the car in an orange glow.

“Where are you taking us, Ms. Calor?” Pellon asked Sylva, slightly uncomfortable in the back seat. He was not used to being a passenger, let alone a passenger in a ground car.

“Did you want to go to dinner, or your hotel, or…?”

“There’s a restaurant at the Academy, isn’t there?” Maxes asked. Yan nodded. “Let’s go there.”

Sylva turned the car sharply, and then they were off through Yora streets. Sylva wasn’t taking the most direct route, which annoyed Yan a little, but her family didn’t seem to notice, so Yan didn’t bring it up. If Sylva wanted to take them on a sightseeing tour of the Empire’s capitol building, it was probably fine.

“There’s Stonecourt,” Sylva said as they drove in a wide perimeter past the massive complex that housed most of the government.

“You ever been inside?” Maxes asked, staring out the window at the manicured lawn that sloped gently up towards the imposing building, just now starting to be lit up for the night.

“We took a tour in our fifth year,” Yan said. “Field trip.” She had vague memories of the trip, but old buildings, stone corridors, and tour guides all tended to blend into a vague mash after a while, and there hadn’t been anything that thrilling inside. 

“Are we going to drive past where you’ll be working?” Maxes asked.

“If I get xenobio, I might be in the colonization office,” Yan said. “But that’s…” She wracked her brain for its location, picturing the building in her head. “A few kilos south of here.”

“And you, Ms. Calor?” Pellon asked.

“I have no idea what I’m going to be doing. But probably not anything that high profile, so probably not here in Imperial Center.”

“Sylva has the soul of a poet, not a politician,” Yan said jokingly. Sylva probably would have elbowed her, had she not been driving.

“The universe needs all sorts,” Maxes said.

Sylva was heading towards the Academy now, and they had begun the long drive up the steep hill on which it sat. Even more than Stonecourt, the Academy was an imposing presence. It could be seen from basically anywhere, if you had an unobstructed view past the buildings. Its temple looked down over the city, the giant stained glass lit like a watchful eye. 

Sylva pulled into the parking lot of the restaurant on the Academy grounds. Yan had only ever been there before on rare occasions— it wasn’t anything like the dining halls that students frequented. The Starlight was a fancy place, meant mostly for the high ups at the Academy to entertain alumni and other important guests. The parking lot had a moderate number of cars in it, and Yan wondered if they would even be able to get a seat. Still, they all got out and went up to the front door. Although she was wearing her nicest school uniform, Yan still felt underdressed.

She was right to be worried, because as they walked inside the dim restaurant, Maxes asked at the desk about getting a table, and they were met with the confounding question, “Do you have a ticket?”

Maxes glanced back at Pellon and Yan, as if either of them had the answer. “There must be some kind of event going on,” Yan said, peering into the swanky restaurant. The place was filled with people in the bar area, most of them wearing cassocks. Yan recognized a couple of the masters that she had had over the years. Perhaps it was an end of the year celebration for the Academy staff. “We’ll just have to go somewhere else,” Yan said with a shrug, trying to defuse the awkwardness of picking the wrong venue.

At that moment, the door opened behind the group. Yan turned half on instinct, and came face to face with her own mentor, Master Farber, walking side by side with the head of the Academy, Master Windreshon. Farber smiled widely. “Yan, good to see you! What are you doing here?”

Windreshon looked between the two of them, gave a tight smile to Yan and Sylva, then walked into the restaurant, past the desk, leaving Yan to make the awkward introductions to her family.

“Uh, hi Master Farber,” Yan said. “My family are here for a visit. This is my uncle, Maxes BarCarran, and my cousin, Captain Pellon BarCarran. Um, Maxes, Captain Pellon, this is my mentor, Master Farber.” Sylva knew who Farber was, having had him for class, so there was no need to make that introduction, and she just waved hello.

“Pleasure to meet you,” Pellon said, taking stock of the situation and shaking Farber’s hand. “I’ve heard a lot about you from Yan.”

“Only good things, I hope.”

“Of course,” Maxes said, also shaking Farber’s hand. “And I hope our little wandering spacer child hasn’t caused too much trouble on your planet.”

Farber laughed. “Of course not. The Academy’s no stranger to spacers, after all. There seem to be rather more of them with the power than normal probability would suggest.” He winked at Yan, who resisted the urge to cringe. “Yan has been a joy to have as a student. It’ll be a shame when she graduates, but…” He smiled a wide smile and said nothing more on the subject. “Has your family seen your final project yet?”

“No, I put it in the hall this morning,” Yan said.

“Excellent, excellent,” Farber said. “If you get a chance to stop by during visiting hours, you should,” he said to Maxes and Pellon. “It’s quite an impressive feat. Beautiful work.”

Yan wasn’t sure she would go that far. Her project probably looked quite unimpressive compared to a lot of the others, if one didn’t know how it was made. Her face was burning with the compliments, but she couldn’t escape the conversation or the scrutiny that came with it.

“If we get a chance, we’ll be certain to stop by,” Pellon said. “But for now, I suppose we shall have to find a different venue for dinner, if this one is booked up.”

“Oh!” Farber exclaimed. “Don’t worry about that, there’s plenty of room.” He turned to the man at the desk. “Can you get them a table? I promise they won’t cause any trouble.”

“I don’t want to impose,” Yan said. “It’s fine.”

“No, no,” Farber said. “The only reason they’re not letting the public in right now is that there’s about a ten percent chance that a VIP shows up, and they don’t want a scene. But you’re not public; you’re my student. And my student’s family, and friend, of course.”

The man at the desk acquiesced and gathered menus. “VIP?” Pellon asked.

“I’m certain he won’t show, so no point in getting your hopes up. Well, I have to go be social,” Farber said with a smile. “Enjoy your dinner, and it was a pleasure to meet Yan’s esteemed family.”

“The pleasure is mine, I’m sure,” Pellon said. “Thank you for teaching her well.”

Farber flitted off to join the crowd of other masters; some waved at Yan when he pointed her out to them. Yan smiled and waved back, feeling like a bug in a jar. But they forgot about her soon enough, and their party was sat at a back table, away from the general hubbub of Academy bigwigs. Yan couldn’t say that she minded.

“You’re popular around here, that you can pull favors like that,” Maxes said with a smile after they had been seated. Yan shrugged. Sure, the masters liked her, but Farber probably would have done the same for most of his other mentees. 

“Do you have any photos of this project he mentioned?” Pellon asked. He was always curious about the particulars of Yan’s schooling. “I don’t know if we’re going to have a chance to stop by later, so you might as well show us now.”

“Yeah, I want to see it too!” Sylva leaned hard on Yan’s shoulder as she pulled out her phone to find the picture that she wanted to display.

“You haven’t already seen it?” Maxes asked.

“They’re supposed to be kept secret from everyone except your mentor until the actual day of the exhibition,” Yan said. “To stop cheating, I guess.” The final projects were meant to be representative of each student as a power user, containing a kind of divine spark of their essence, which could be contaminated if too much influence from another person went into the work. She found the photo, really a couple seconds of moving image, and laid her phone on the table for everyone to see.

The image was unremarkable—it showed a fishbowl, really a complete sphere, with a small goldfish swimming and darting around through some aquatic plants. When Yan’s finger entered the frame and pressed on the side of the glass, the fish shied away from it. Then the clip repeated.

“It doesn’t look like much,” Yan said, rather apologetically. She knew her family wouldn’t think it was that impressive. “Sorry for not being more exciting.”

“Sylva seems to think otherwise,” Pellon said, nodding at Sylva, who was watching the fish flit about with wide eyes.

“You made that?” Sylva asked. “You…”

“It’s not  _ alive _ alive,” Yan hastily clarified, not wanting Sylva to think that she had broken one of the most fundamental laws that governed the use of the sacred power. Life couldn’t be created, no matter how much one tried. “It’s just a, uh, automaton. I modeled all the chemical processes, and stuff. It’s pretty accurate.”

Maxes smiled, suddenly understanding. “Angling right for that xenobio slot, aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” Yan said, relieved that he understood. “Exactly. I hope they’ll notice and like it. I mean, otherwise it’s kinda a joke.”

Sylva shook her head. “That’s crazy, Yan. Beautiful.” There was real appreciation in her voice, and she leaned back in her seat as Yan slipped her phone back into her pocket. Pellon and Maxes glanced at each other, some unspoken communication passing between the captain and one of the senior members of his crew that Yan couldn’t understand.

“Are you coming aboard the  _ Dreams  _ this summer?” Pellon asked. “I’d be happy to have either or both of you.”

Yan shrugged, twisted the napkin laid out in front of her. “It depends on what apprenticeship I get. If I have to spend the summer finding a house…” That was what the last summer break between graduation and apprenticeships was really for. Many Academy graduates had to move far and wide, and that required a certain amount of time to find accommodation.

“It’s likely that you’ll both end up right here in Yora, though, isn’t it?”

“It really just depends,” she said again. “There’s no guarantees. Even if I get xenobio, I might get shipped off to a colony somewhere.”

“I hope we’re both in Yora together. Then we can split an apartment. Save on rent,” Sylva said with a grin and a nudge.

This was actually pretty comforting to Yan, and she smiled. “Yeah, I hope so.”

Again, there was that glance between Pellon and Maxes. “Well, let me know,” Pellon said. “I’m happy to give you both letters of transit if you don’t need to spend time househunting.”

“Thank you for the offer,” Sylva said. “I’ll definitely let you know. Well, through Yan, since I don’t have an ansible card.”

Pellon laughed and nodded. From there, the conversation moved on to quotidian things, like how the rest of Yan’s family was doing. They ordered their food and received it. It was good, which was expected, given the price. Yan’s family had plenty of money, but that didn’t mean she didn’t balk at things that seemed a little too luxurious.

While they were eating, Pellon suddenly stiffened and looked out across the room towards the door. Yan and Maxes, attentive to his movements in the subtle way that crew were towards their leader, turned to look.

“The VIP did decide to arrive, I see,” Maxes said, voice quite low.

Walking in the door, flanked by an entourage of dark suited men, was First Sandreas, the leader of the Empire. He was wearing a cassock much like Yan’s, the classic uniform of anyone with the power, but it was accompanied by a long, blood red cape draped off his shoulders. Behind him was the largest man Yan had ever seen, taller than any spacer she had ever met, even. Sandreas said a few words to the large man, indistinguishable through the noise of the restaurant and over the distance, then smiled and warmly greeted the Academy high-ups. Farber, who was standing on the edge of that group, looked over to where Yan was sitting, saw her looking, and gave a grin visible even at this distance.

“Wow,” Sylva said. “What’s he doing here?”

“I had heard rumors that he was going to be taking apprentices soon,” Pellon said, picking up his wine glass and taking a sip. “I didn’t quite believe that they were true. But I suppose this goes to show that they are.”

“Who’d you hear that from?” Maxes asked.

“Wil Vaneik,” Pellon said with a thin smile.

“I see why you failed to believe it then.”

Sylva looked between them, not really understanding the conversation. Yan leaned towards her and whispered in her ear, “I’ll explain later.”

The idea of First Sandreas taking apprentices was a surprising one, and an exciting one. Yan began mentally running down the list of her classmates to see who she thought the likely candidates were. Her thoughts were interrupted when Maxes asked, “Who’s the big one?”

“You noticed too?” Pellon asked with a smile. “They do a decent job of cropping him out of the news, but he’s in there sometimes.”

“You’d think that First Sandreas wouldn’t want a pirate at his back,” Maxes said, watching the group with narrowed eyes.

Yan’s heartrate, which had already been thrumming along with excitement and interest, skyrocketed at Maxes’ words. She gripped the napkin in her lap so hard that her knuckles turned white. Sylva, next to her, noticed, and asked, “Pirate?”

“You don’t get that big without growing up in space, and without being genetically modified in the womb. Only pirates do that,” Pellon said. “It’s the only real explanation.” Pellon raised an eyebrow, staring out over Yan’s shoulder. “Hm. It seems our party crashing has been noticed.”

Yan could barely turn her head to look, and when she did, her heart leapt into her throat. The big man had separated himself from the group and was coming over to them, his hands in his pockets, though surely, Yan thought, with his hand on a gun.

“Drink up before we get kicked out, I suppose,” Maxes said, taking a sip of his wine. “Too expensive to waste.”

The idea of being in a room with a pirate made Yan too afraid to move, let alone drink her wine. She didn’t turn away as the giant continued walking towards them. Farber, too, had noticed the motion, and he left the group around First Sandreas and quietly put himself in the large man’s path. Yan could feel the pirate’s eyes boring into her, even as he had a discussion with Farber. It ended with the pirate putting a heavy and broad hand on Farber’s shoulder, giving a curt nod to Yan and her tablemates. Across from her, Pellon gave a nod back. Yan couldn’t quite understand what had taken place, but as the pirate seemed to vanish into the crowd and they seemed to be in no danger of getting kicked out, she calmed down and relaxed a little in her seat. Still on edge, but no longer feeling like she was on a ship under attack.

“You okay?” Sylva asked.

“Hate pirates,” Yan said. “They shouldn’t exist.”

“Well, they do, and we just have to live with them,” Pellon said. “The secret to surviving pirates is being on equal terms. And neither of us are in ships right now, so we are, in a way, on equal footing. I doubt that either of us are going to cause the other trouble. Try not to worry about it.” He seemed calm, so Yan tried her best to take the cue from her captain and finish her meal without too much anxiety. Any curiosity she had about what First Sandreas was doing had died with that odd interaction, though, and the conversation felt dull and muted by worry.

When the time came to pay the bill, the waiter came over with a kind of bemused expression and presented them with a receipt for zero charges. “Your meal was covered by First Sandreas,” he said. “With apologies for causing an interruption to your dinner.”

Pellon laughed at that.

On the way out the door, Yan felt someone’s gaze upon her, and she turned to her left. At the back of the room, hidden slightly in the shadows, she made eye contact with the large man, who nodded to her. Yan rushed out of the restaurant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Lydia, Galvin, and Jade for the beta read.


	2. A Toast to the Children of the Future

Aymon Sandreas enjoyed parties, on occasion, but not when they distracted him from more important matters. He kept himself patient throughout the evening, speaking cordially to all the masters of the Academy: the oldest ones who had been his own teachers long ago, some who had been his peers, and some of whom he didn't know at all. It was a low key event, and the food was pleasant, but it stretched on.

He asked Marca Windreshon, the head of the Academy, when he would be allowed to finally go and choose his apprentices, a task that he didn't want to do but might as well get over with.

"The students have until eight to get their projects into the hall," Marca said, detecting his impatience, despite his even tone. "If you take a long, slow walk through campus, you can leave in fifteen minutes and get there as soon as the hall is empty."

Aymon smiled and thanked her. He would wait a little longer than fifteen minutes, for politeness' sake, to not seem as though he was rushing out. It was important to maintain the image, which, in this case, was that he respected and enjoyed working with the people at the Academy. He did, to the extent that he ever thought about them.

The Academy lived in his mind as squarely a relic from the past. Although so many of the people he worked with came from these halls, and he trusted them on some level because of their shared upbringing, he rarely contemplated or had much nostalgia for his youth spent here. He had been a different person then, with so much less to think about. 

When Aymon did finally leave the party, it was with relief. He did take the opportunity to walk the grounds to the exhibition hall, flanked at a respectful distance by his guards and at a much closer distance by Halen, one step behind his right shoulder, a steady presence.

The night sky was slightly cloudy, obscuring the stars, and a light breeze pulled Aymon's cape out behind him like a banner. Aymon was of average height and build, with a sharp, pale face and piercing dark eyes. His hair was short and swept back from his forehead, streaked with grey among the dark brown. He was good looking, and looked younger than he actually was. 

Halen, behind him, was massive, though he moved with the quietness of a large cat. He had square jowls and light brown hair that had receded slightly, then stopped receding. His face was flushed a permanent, splotchy red, which tended to give people the first impression that he was chronically angry, which couldn't be further from the truth.

"Can I make a bet with you, Aymon?" Halen asked, speaking so softly that only the two of them could hear each other.

"About?"

"Your future apprentices."

Aymon smiled. It couldn't be anything else. "And what's the wager?"

"If I win, you open up the bottle Vaneik sent you for your birthday."

Aymon scoffed. "And if you lose?" He didn't turn to look at Halen, but he knew that Halen would be smiling.

"Your choice."

"You tease me."

"Of course."

"Well, what specifically are you betting on?"

"To forewarn is to forearm, isn't it? I'll tell you when you come back out." They had arrived at the exhibition hall, though they stopped a good ten yards away from the Academy security guard at the door, far enough away that they could carry on their low conversation. 

"You're not coming in?"

"I'm sure my presence would cloud your judgement. They'll be your apprentices, after all."

Halen was right, though Aymon didn't like it. "You'll be outside the door."

"Of course."

They approached the imposing building, then, and the security was quick to let them in. The halls were dark, and their shoes made soft sounds on the marble floors. "Right this way, sir," the guard said, leading them to the destination.

Aymon knew the way. After all, he had once exhibited his own project here. The guard unlocked and pushed open the heavy double doors to the exhibition hall proper. Aymon considered saying something more to Halen, but then the guard was right there, and instead he slipped inside the long hall, shutting the door behind him.

The lights were off in the hall, except for emergency exit signs, but it was plenty light from the large moon's glow spilling in through the tall windows that stretched to the vaulted ceiling.

Projects were arrayed in rows on huge tables, each one with a numerical code, which Aymon was supposed to write down to make his selection. Some of the projects were large, some were small, but if he stretched out his awareness in the power, he could feel each one suffused with a warm glow, the echoes of the spirit of the student who made it. 

Aymon walked the perimeter of the hall for a minute, taking in the sights, but it would take too long to examine each project individually. He didn't want to be here all night. So he sat down on the cold floor in the center of the room, breathed deeply, let the silence fill his ears, and closed his eyes. He sank down into a trance as though he were slipping on a piece of clothing. Here, in this state, feeling completely bodiless and at one with the universe, he could stretch out his awareness and listen as the universe spoke to him. He could feel Halen, waiting just outside the door with the rest of the guards, but he turned his attention away from Halen and towards the projects on tables. 

At first, he had a worry that nothing would call to him, that this was the wrong year to choose apprentices after all, but as he sat and just let the sensations travel through him, he found what he needed to find, far faster than he had thought he might. Three sparks fixed in his mind. The feelings that they gave him were not easily described, but they brought to mind certain physical memories: sticking his hand into a running stream of water, lighting a match and holding it to a candle wick, catching his own reflection unexpectedly in a window and being surprised at what he saw there.

The stream first, then.

He stood on legs that creaked a little in protest, and, with eyes still closed, walked gingerly to where the first spark was. He reached out to touch it without looking, felt a cool, hard surface of glass, and the tingle of his power meeting the power of the student's creation. He opened his eyes and looked down at what he was touching.

It was a glass sphere. Inside it, illuminated only by the ghostly moonlight, were gently rustling aquatic plants. In between them darted a small goldfish. It seemed so alive, Aymon almost believed it was. But he probed at it with his power and the layers of tricks that made it up were revealed to him: chemical processes guided along by brute force, neurons in the brain of the fish firing through magic. There was no spark of life here, but it was as close to creating real life as one could get. And, at the heart of the fish, right in the center, there was a bit of humor, a kind of joy in its creation. Aymon couldn't help but smile when he felt that echoed happiness. 

It seemed like such a pure and innocent thing to create. The student was obviously talented, there was no doubt about that-- this had taken an absolutely fiendish amount of work to put together. And they were smart, had learned well. He wanted this student, but he hesitated before writing the number down. Clearly, this project had been designed for a specific audience: the attention to anatomical, biological, and chemical detail screamed that the student wanted to go into science of some sort. If they had simply wanted to create the illusion of life, to make something purely fun, there were many less elaborate routes they could have taken.

He would be taking that future away from this student if he wrote their number down. And he would probably be taking the sheer joy of creation away from them, too. There was little levity in his line of work. In fact, by writing the number down, there was a good chance he was signing this student's death warrant.

Still, he did it anyway. The project had called to him, and he was obliged to answer the call.

Aymon walked on to the next project, the one the one that felt like the match, burning the tips of his fingers. It was far larger than the last one was, so much so that he needed to take a few steps back to take it in.

It was a statue, made of solid metal, mostly iron. It was a genderless figure, dressed in a long, swirling robe, holding a sword above their head, ready to strike. The figure looked down at the person standing beneath the sword with a face wrought in shining gold. It seemed to trap and hold Aymon's attention, and it filled him with a particular thrill of fear, as though the sword were liable to come down upon his head, should he be judged and found wanting.

He wondered what the criteria for judgement were. He reached out his power into the statue and laughed aloud at what he found, the sound echoing through the empty hall.

The statue was designed to make the viewer afraid; it was actively projecting that feeling into his mind. And, as for the judgement criteria, there were none. The figure could move, could swing its sword, but there was a deliberate, empty blank where a trigger condition should be. Aymon had the sudden temptation to put one in himself, but he resisted the foolish urge and just considered the student who had made the project.

An eye for beauty, a necessary understanding of the workings of the human heart and mind. An appreciation of fear. A love of being able to split the world into right and wrong with the slash of a sword. A complete lack of follow through. 

That could be fixed, perhaps. Aymon did have an appreciation for people who understood image, and this student reminded him of his own project, long ago. He wrote the number down.

And then it was on to the last one.

Another statue, he found. They seemed to be common this year, though they hadn't been when he had graduated. Back then, the fad had been music. This year, the hall was dead silent, but he remembered how chaotic and noisy it had been when he had graduated, and could almost summon to life that memory-- all his old friends talking and laughing as they walked around the room together, looking at what they had made. He cleared those thoughts from his mind, and looked at the reality before him.

This statue was pale and waxy, human sized, and hovering a few centimeters off the ground. It was nude, except for a tablecloth wrapped around its waist and clumsily tied. The tablecloth was not made with the power, Aymon found as he probed at it with his own power. It was just fabric, probably taken from one of the campus dining halls. As his power touched the statue itself, though, he took a step back. The statue began to warp and shift, taking on the exact likeness of Aymon himself, down to the thick scar that crossed the length of his chest.

He raised his hand. The statue raised its hand. He said, "Oh Lord, who made your humble servant from starlight..." And the statue said it back to him, in the same voice, at the same time.

It was a perfect mirror, down to the last detail. The statue even breathed as Aymon did. When he pressed his power against it, all it reflected was his own intentions. He couldn't even feel how the thing was built, it was that slickly disguised. 

And what did that tell him about the student? They were adaptable, maybe. Clever, certainly. They had done a good job of tricking this process, the one process that was supposed to reveal their own beings. They had taken that and twisted it. It was impressive, but... He hesitated still.

Did he want an apprentice who wasn't even willing to show their true self? Perhaps that was as much of an advantage as it was a weakness. After all, being a leader was about cultivating an image as much as anything. If he thought of a leader as the pure reflection of the society that they came from, and a student as the reflection of their teacher, yes, perhaps this would work.

He wrote the student's number down. Maybe it was delusion. Maybe it was a mistake. But he made his choice, and then pulled all his power back inside his body. The statue returned to being waxy and still. Without his power floating around him, the hall suddenly felt cold and empty, and Aymon wanted to leave.

He took one final look at the statue, the rows of projects on tables, then hurried out of the hall, back to Halen who smiled at him as the door opened. "Make your decision?" Halen asked.

Aymon nodded.

"Did you need to talk to--"

Aymon waved his hand. "No, I can just send a message."

Halen nodded, understanding Aymon's desire to leave. "Right. The car is waiting."

The trip back to Stonecourt was short and silent, and when they arrived, Halen followed Aymon to his private quarters, as was their usual ritual.

Aymon's rooms were richly furnished, bright, and neat. They could have never been called cozy, but Aymon had called them home since he had inherited the title of First, and they were at least filled with the things that Aymon had gathered and enjoyed over the years: knick knacks on shelves, photographs and paintings on the walls, and Halen smiling at him.

"Are you going to break out Vaneik's birthday gift?" Halen asked as he sat down on Aymon's couch, crossing his legs and taking up most of the space. Aymon sat across from him.

"You'll have to tell me what I was betting on first."

"You won't open it up simply in honor of your future apprentices?" Halen asked. 

"Think you're about to lose your bet?"

"No," Halen said. He stared up at the ceiling. "I had a most interesting conversation with one of the Academy people, right after we arrived."

"I had wondered what that was all about."

"I figured there was no need to worry you about it earlier. You had some accidental party crashers lurking in the back."

"Oh?"

"Two students and one of their families. One of the masters had let them in."

"And this came to your attention because?"

"It would be my prerogative to pick out interlopers regardless," Halen said. "But one of the students was on the edge of a complete panic. Obviously, that kind of thing catches my attention, especially when it's that clear over the crowd noise."

Aymon frowned. "Panic?"

Halen smiled. "Yes."

"I assume you found out why."

"I was on my way to investigate, but the one who invited them in stopped me and told me who they were."

"And they are?" Halen was drawing out the story for suspense, but Aymon found he was unexpectedly tired and not in the mood for suspense or entertainment. Choosing apprentices had been more draining than he had realized. Halen picked upon this and smiled gently.

"It's funny," Halen said. "Usually, when we walk into a room and panic ensues, it's over you. But she was a spacer, must have seen me for a pirate right away, got herself worked up a little. Anyway, I spoke to her mentor. By his account, she's quite talented."

"And you think I've picked this spacer child to be my apprentice? Wouldn't it be a problem if she panics whenever she's in a room with you?"

Halen laughed. "I think we could learn to work with each other."

"Alright, tell me the name, and I'll check it when I get their profiles."

"I'll do you better-- her master described her project to me, which I assume you saw."

"Fine, fine," Aymon said. "There were hundreds of projects in that hall, though. And I only picked three."

Halen closed his eyes. "Was one of them a fishbowl?" 

"You were spying on me, you liar," Aymon said, incredulous.

Halen stood. "I wouldn't lie to you."

"If you could tell just from being in a room with the girl that I would want her as my apprentice, why do we go to the trouble of making projects to begin with?"

Halen had already wandered away, into the dining room area, where he was pulling out the bottle from the wine fridge and gathering two glasses from the cabinet. "I'm a special case. Besides, you wouldn't want to pick students out of a hundreds long police lineup. And if you had seen how she was feeling with me standing behind you, you wouldn't have wanted her."

Aymon sighed. "I'm shocked you aren't saying something about how the Academy is arcane and stupid."

"And the Academy is arcane and stupid," Halen said, returning with a smile. "May I?" He held up the bottle of wine, set the glasses down on the table.

"You won," Aymon said, leaning back in his seat.

Halen put the bottle down on the coffee table, then came around behind Aymon and put his thick hands on Aymon's shoulders. Aymon relaxed into the touch. Halen's power was working on him, relaxing the tension in his neck, releasing the knot in his back that he hadn't been fully aware of. "Don't be so grim," Halen said, then sat down next to Aymon.

He uncorked the bottle with his power, not bothering with a corkscrew, and poured the wine into the two glasses, passing one to Aymon.

"What are we toasting to?" Halen asked, holding up his glass.

"To the future leader of the Empire," Aymon said.

"Let's just say to the future." Halen clinked his glass against Aymon's, and they drank.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Jade for the beta read.


	3. The Interview

Yan sat at the kitchen table of the dorm apartment that she shared with Sylva, staring down at the three thick pieces of colorful cardstock that she had gotten in the mail. They were arranged out on the table in a spread in front of her, one a deep blue with white text, one a forest green with black text, and one a stark white with red text and gold along the edges of the card. They all said approximately the same thing: her name, Yan BarCarran, and the time and place for her interview. 

She kept shuffling the cards around on the table, trying to put them in some sort of order. Though officially they weren't labeled with who they were from, she knew. The blue card was from the Academy itself, offering her the opportunity to eventually become a staff member. Her own mentor, Master Farber, had scrawled a note on the back of it.

"Yan, I know you have at least one other compelling offer (& maybe more!) so I don't expect you to take me up on this, but I had to put in at least a token gesture to keep you in my clutches :) "

The green card was even less of a surprise, though when she had first laid eyes on it, she had almost cried tears of relief. It was the offer from the xenobiology team, exactly as she had been hoping for. 

It was the white and red card that troubled her. She picked up the card and flipped it over and over in her hands, feeling the paper and the slight indents that the ink had made-- letterpressed, not just printed. It was a luxe thing, higher quality than the other two. On a whim, she reached out her power to touch the gilt on the edge of the card, investigating it on a molecular level. It had the familiar sensation of real gold, not just ink. 

She rearranged the cards again on the table, in a column going down. Green, white, blue.

Yan knew in her heart that she wouldn't take the offer from Master Farber to stay at the Academy. She appreciated the gesture, and the strength of its sentiment was almost enough to make her consider it, or at least feel guilty for not considering it, but she didn't believe that she would make a good teacher. 

Looking at the white card with red letters put a sinking feeling in her stomach. She didn't know for sure what it was, but she had a terrible guess. First Sandreas was taking apprentices. The red on the card was the exact same shade as the cape he had been wearing when she caught a glimpse of him in the restaurant. She couldn't imagine who else would send such an elaborate invitation.

Sylva came into the kitchen, turned on the electric kettle, then came up behind Yan and leaned on the back of Yan's chair, putting her elbows on Yan's shoulders and her chin on the top of Yan's head. "Still fiddling with those?"

"You have it easy," Yan said.

Sylva scoffed. "Sure, getting one offer is 'easy', but getting three..." There was a distinct note of jealousy in her voice.

Yan disentangled herself from Sylva's elbows and turned around in her chair to look at her. "Are you mad at me for this?"

"No," Sylva said. "Mostly at myself." She stared past Yan, at the decorative clock on the wall.

"Hey," Yan said, grabbing her arm. "I think you're perfect. I'd give you an apprenticeship any day of the week."

Sylva's laugh was bitter, but she tried to smile through it. "Thanks." 

The kettle boiled. Sylva made herself some tea, then slid into the creaky wooden chair next to Yan. She pulled the three cards over to herself and did the same mental calculations that they had both been doing all morning.

"You should take xenobio," Sylva said. "It's not really even a choice. We'd both be in Yora, we could get a place together..." She steadfastly ignored the white card, perhaps because of the air of mystery it held. Sylva was much more into the concrete possibilities than the abstract ones.

"I'll go to all the interviews, at least," Yan said. "I have to know."

Sylva nodded. She pulled her own card out from her cassock pocket, laid it on the table next to Yan's. Hers was a pale blue with black text, slightly battered from all the handling it had taken in her pocket. "IKRB won't be so bad."

"I'm sure you'll love it." IKRB was the Imperial Knowledge Review Board, a branch of the government dedicated to reviewing and approving mostly theological texts. "You've always had an ear for language."

Sylva heaved a sigh into her cup of tea. "I guess. Did you tell your family about this?"

"I told them that I got the two knowns and a mystery. I'm sure they think I'm going to take xenobio. They won't get back to me until they're back at a station though." She glanced at the calendar. "Probably will be a couple days."

"So, not until after interviews."

"Yeah."

* * *

Yan dressed in her nicest uniform for her third and final interview, the mysterious one that had left her painfully distracted. The line between anticipation and fear was a thin one, and she could never tell if she was crossing it; the two emotions jittered her in almost the same way.

The interview was at noon in the nicest building on campus, the one where all the top Academy officials kept their offices. Yan had to sign in and be escorted by a guard into a waiting room.

There were two other students there, sitting in chairs against the wall. She recognized both of them, knew their names and faces, but they weren't anything more than classmates. She probably hadn't had anything more than a passing conversation with either of them in years.

The first student was Sid Welslak, who was clearly trying to appear nonchalant, with his legs stretched out before him and a wide smile on his face. He was a pale man, shaved completely bald, but with thick eyebrows over a pair of sturdy looking glasses. Yan knew he was deaf, a fact that interested her in a distant kind of way. As a spacer, she had a limited command of sign language, though most of her vocabulary was technical. In order to be allowed to go on spacewalks, she had needed to learn the language well enough to communicate in event of radio failure. Regardless of Yan's proficiency with sign, Sid had some way of understanding when people spoke to him aloud, though Yan didn't know by what mechanism; she hadn't been nosy enough to ask.

Kino Mejia sat next to Sid, twisting a piece of string vigorously between her fingers, some kind of nervous tic. Yan's impression of her was that she was intensely quiet and kept to herself, but came to midnight worship a lot. Yan saw her there basically every time that she decided to go. Kino had tanned skin, and two long braids of straight dark hair hung down past her ears. She stared at Yan as she came in but didn't say anything. 

"Hi," Yan said aloud, trying to break the awkward stiffness of the moment.

"Hi you," Sid signed back at her.

"Who's in there?" Yan signed back, struggling for a second to pull the signs from her distant memory. Sid grinned and shrugged.

"You have bad sign," he signed back, deliberately slowly for her. His face was extremely expressive, and he leaned forward in his seat. Yan tried not to be too offended.

"No p-r-a-c-t-i-c-e."

Kino watched this exchange without saying anything, though she was definitely paying attention; her eyes flicked between the two of them, and her fingers twitched along with Yan's when she fingerspelled the last word.

Their short conversation came to an end when Yan felt a wave of someone's power wash over her, cresting and passing through her body. She shivered, and the door at the end of the room swung open.

Immediately, Yan stiffened in her seat, clenching her hands at her sides so hard that her fingers dug little marks into her palm. There, holding the door open, was the man from the restaurant. The pirate. Yan stared at him, and he stared back at her.

Now that she could see him up close in a well lit room, Yan realized that he was rather ugly, with a splotchy face. The corner of his lip twitched in a suppressed smile. He was mocking her. This minute shift in expression made Yan more angry than afraid, suddenly, wiping even the thought of her upcoming interview (and who that would surely be with) almost completely out of her mind.

"Sid Welslak," the pirate said, and jerked his head at Sid. Yan momentarily paused her staring at the pirate and gave Sid a quick and encouraging smile, though he noticed her tension and his eyes traveled between her face and the pirate, hesitating for a fraction of a second.

Sid headed into the office, and the pirate shut the door behind him, leaving Yan, Kino, and himself alone in the antechamber. He leaned against the wall serenely, observing Yan and Kino, but not looking directly at them. Yan decided to do some observation of her own, and she took a few deep breaths and centered herself, trying to calm down enough to really focus on her own power. She took a tendril of it and sent it across the room. When she had seen him the other day, she suspected that he was carrying a gun. She at least wanted to confirm that suspicion, so she pressed the tendril of power past the first layer of his clothes, to see if it was tucked just underneath the hem of his black jacket, accessible through the pocket if necessary. 

Her power found its mark, passing through the tingling cold metal, but she overshot slightly in her haste and she brushed against the pirate's skin. The contact buzzed along the line of power Yan had drawn between the two of them, and Yan jumped back as though she had been stung, pulling her power back into herself and looking warily at him. She hadn't known that he was a sensitive. She shouldn't have been surprised by that, but she was.

For his own part, the pirate did not outwardly react to her probing, continuing to lean against the wall nonchalantly, but Yan still felt observed. Every so often, while they waited, she felt him push his power out in a non-directed wave, clearly checking the building, keeping track of who was where and doing what.

It was a stiff and tense wait for Yan, as neither the pirate nor Kino seemed intent on making conversation. The only movement in the room was Kino winding her piece of string over and over through her fingers, a relentless fidget.

Finally, the door opened and Sid came out. He smiled at Yan, knocked the underside of his chin with his knuckles-- chin up-- and headed out of the waiting room.

"Kino Mejia," the pirate said, and Kino went in, leaving Yan alone with the pirate.

She couldn't decide if she wanted to speak to him or not. Now that Kino was out of the room, his amusement at her obvious discomfort showed far more clearly on his face, but he didn't seem inclined to break the silence either. Yan went as far as to narrow her eyes at him, and his smirk grew more pronounced. She looked away.

After a long time, Kino emerged, nodded to Yan, and left. As Yan stood to enter the interview room, the pirate looked at her directly.

"Good luck, Ms. BarCarran," he said. She hadn't paid attention to his voice before, but it was low, and softer than she had thought.

She scurried into the interview room.

First Sandreas was sitting behind a wooden desk, with a window overlooking the campus green at his back. The light in the room was dim, and it was bright outside, so Sandreas's face was cast in a dull shadow, obscuring some of his expression. There was a chair in front of the desk, and Yan wasn't sure if she was supposed to sit or not. She had never been face to face with someone this important before. 

"Please, take a seat," Sandreas said, gesturing.

Yan almost stumbled in her rush to obey.

In front of Sandreas on the desk was a manilla folder labeled with her name. He folded his hands on top of it.

"I assume you know who I am," he said. "Or do I need to make a formal introduction?" There was a touch of humor in his voice, but Yan was too nervous to find it funny.

"It's an honor to meet you, First Sandreas," she said.

He smiled at her, his head slightly tilted as though he were considering something. "You come highly recommended by your mentor, Ms. BarCarran," Sandreas said after a second. Between this opening and the pirate outside, the whole process seemed designed to make Yan as uncomfortable as possible. But she put a smile on her face and tried to respond politely.

"I'm glad to hear it," she said. 

"And, for my own part, I liked your project very much."

"Thank you."

"I do have a question though," he said. Yan tried to keep still.

"I'd be happy to answer," she said, though she had no idea what he was talking about. Her project was almost purely technical, requiring almost nothing in the way of artistic interpretation.

"What was the punchline of the joke?" he asked.

"I'm sorry, I don't know what you mean." She had an inkling of what he was asking about, and her heart beat faster.

"You clearly found your own project funny. I could feel the spirit in which it was made. I'm just wondering what exactly you intended."

"Was it theologically unsound?" Yan asked. She had created the illusion of life, after all. If the leader of the populated universe thought that was an affront to God...

Sandreas laughed. "If it was truly heretical, I'm sure your mentor would have stopped you somewhere in the planning stages. You took pride and joy in making the work, I could tell. I just want to know what you were personally thinking."

Yan took a deep breath, tried to steady herself before answering, deciding to go ahead and admit to what she had been joking about. "I couldn't really decide what the real joke was. 'It's not alive, but...'" She trailed off for a second, stared above Sandreas's shoulders as she thought of the best way to express the feeling she had while designing her fishbowl. "’That which is not living can never die’, maybe. Or, ‘it's not alive, but nobody can tell the difference.’"

"That isn't really true, though," Sandreas said mildly.

She nodded, feeling slightly bolstered. "That's why it's funny. Of course you can tell it's not alive, if you look at it with the power, and it can be destroyed just like anything else. I thought what was important was that, you know, we're always striving to master what God created at the beginning of time, and we're never going to get there, but it's in the trying that--"

Sandreas held up his hand and Yan fell silent. "I don't need a lecture on theology right this second. Perhaps after you accept my offer for apprenticeship, you can lecture me at length."

Yan didn't have a response ready, so she floundered for a second. "Should I?"

"Should you accept?" Sandreas leaned back in his seat, the light from the window illuminating the fine strands of the top of his hair. "That depends on a lot of things, I suppose."

Yan nodded. Of course it did.

"I understand that you have other offers?"

"One from xenobiology, one from the Academy staff."

"Good, good." He seemed sincere when he said this. "I do want you to make a real consideration of which you pick. This is not an easy job. I don't live a life that I would force upon the unwilling."

"What would the apprenticeship involve?" Yan asked.

Sandreas laughed. "You weren't even born back when I was Second or apprentice to First Herrault, so I suppose I can't point you to the granular details of that ancient history." He paused for a second, then launched into a speech that he had probably already given twice today.

"You'd be training to take my place, just like most other apprenticeships. The fine details of what you'd be doing on a day to day basis aren't something that I can give to you, because it changes depending on what's happening. Generally speaking, though, you'll learn the ins and outs of power around the Empire, you'll travel, you'll speak to people, you'll learn how to be a ruler. When you know enough of how to comport yourself, I'll send you out as my emissary in places where that's needed.

"I'll teach you what I can. You'll learn a lot more on your own, as I did, and you'll try hard not to make mistakes that ruin people's lives. It's a lot of responsibility.

"It's difficult, often lonely work. You will have access to information that almost no one else has. You will make decisions that can change the lives of entire planets full of people. You will see things that you can't un-see, learn things you can't un-learn, and do things that you can't undo.

"You'll be in danger much of the time. Especially early on, you'll probably look like an easy target for assassination." Though his face was still shadowed, a pained look flashed across it, an unpleasant memory, maybe. Yan recalled that there had been at least one attempt on Sandreas's life, several years ago. Perhaps there had been even more that she didn't know about.

"You'll stop being like just everyone else. You'll have to give your whole self to this apprenticeship." He stopped speaking and looked across at her. Yan, who had been taking it all in, hadn't expected him to stop, and fumbled her next sentence out.

"Is it worth it?"

"Are you asking me, or are you asking for yourself?"

"You," she said. It wasn't as though Sandreas knew enough about her to judge.

He smiled, a distant look. "Yes." As he said this, Yan felt that wave of power from the pirate outside pass through her again, another check. She shifted uncomfortably in her seat. "It's brought me greater joy and greater pain than I could have ever imagined when I sat where you sit now. I can't imagine living a different life, and I wouldn't want to."

Yan nodded.

"Do you have any other questions? This is your chance to ask. Speak as freely as you like."

"Why did you pick me?" she asked. Some of the panic and anxiety had faded, and she was able to ask with a clear, contemplative voice.

"Can anyone explain the whims of God?" Sandreas asked, then shook his head. "Something in your project, something in your being, called to me. It's not something that can be put into words. I'm sure if you were to go out into the exhibition hall and look at the projects, you'd find someone whose spirit called to you in the same way. I don't recommend you do that, though."

"Why not?"

"Because then you'd be forced to confront the fact that you've spent ten years going to school with someone with whom you could have worked perfectly, but you didn't." He shrugged.

"Did you look through the projects when you were a student?"

"God, no. Not in the same way. I looked at them as spectacle only," he said. "And I'm glad I didn't look at them in the power, for the reasons previously discussed."

Yan wanted to continue prying on this point, because she felt fairly certain that if she searched through the projects in the hall, the only one she would find that would call to her was Sylva's. Or, maybe Sandreas was right, and the same thing that called to him in Sid and Kino would also call to Yan. She tried to clear this train of thought from her head, nodded, and focused back on asking a different question.

"What's the salary?" she asked.

Sandreas laughed at that. "I'm always surprised by spacer practicality. Two hundred thousand charges a year, as an apprentice."

Yan flinched at the number. It was more than four times the salary of an unattached spacer-- someone who contracted aboard a ship that didn't belong to their family. It was a large sum of money.

"But money is not really an object, of course," Sandreas continued, waving his hand. "You probably won't need to think about it much."

Yan nodded slowly. "How long do I have to make a decision?"

"I'd prefer you tell me within the week." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a card, much like the one that Yan had received inviting her here, though this was smaller. "That's my personal contact information," he said. "I trust you will not abuse it. You can contact me and let me know your decision."

"Are, uh, Kino and Sid going to be your apprentices?"

"They have the same time to decide that you do, and even if they had already told me, I would hardly be at liberty to divulge that information now. Do you know them?"

"Not really, just classes together sometimes."

There was a moment of silence, and Sandreas seemed ready to dismiss her, but Yan had one more question, even though it felt impertinent.

"You said that something in me called to you. Would we actually work well together?"

"Would you like to find out?"

Yan wasn't sure what he meant by this, so she cautiously nodded.

"Very well. Your file here says you enjoy meditation, much more than the average student. Is that correct?"

Yan hadn't realized the file went into that level of personal detail, and her face heated up in embarrassment, her eyes landing on the manilla folder as if staring at it could tell her what other things Sandreas knew about her. "Yeah, I do," she said.

"Would you like to meditate with me? It might give you a better idea of who I am, as more than just a person from the news." When Yan didn't respond after a fraction of a second, he said, "You can say no. This isn't a test."

Yan wasn't opposed, just truly shocked. It was an intimate thing, to meditate with someone, and she had never expected the leader of the Empire to open himself up like that. "I'll do it," Yan said. "Yes."

He smiled and laid his hands on the desk, palm up. Yan scooted forward in her chair and laid her hands on top of his, palm to palm. She could feel the faintest pulse of his heartbeat with her fingertip over the delicate skin of his wrist, and his hands were warm and dry. Soft, too.

"I won't make a racket with my singing," he said with a half laugh, then his face stilled and he closed his eyes, beginning to say a simple prayer out loud. "Oh God, may these things be true: that we may seek You, that we may find You in each wonder of the universe, and that we may be part of Your glory..."

Yan closed her eyes and joined in, the mantra a familiar one. "Oh God..."

They said it several times, focusing only on the words and the feeling of hand-on-hand, until, in a moment of lightness, a dizzy rush, their minds joined together.

Yan could feel Sandreas's body as if it were her own, and she understood his thoughts as they flitted past her, somehow faster than words but clear and full of meaning nonetheless. She could perceive herself as Sandreas understood her: a gangly girl, taller than he was, who had made such a positive impression on... and there was a warm feeling that couldn't be contained or explained... competent, nervous, practical. _Perhaps too self reflective for her own good_ , he thought as he noticed her observing herself through his own lens. He pulled that train of thought away from her grasp.

 _I don't know you well enough for my thoughts to reflect you as you are_ , Sandreas thought. And then he waited for Yan to make her move.

She had to think for a second about what to do. What was the best way to figure out how well they would get along? Sandreas followed this line of thinking with a patient amusement, but did not intervene.

Yan called to the surface of her mind a few memories, moments from her life, and they travelled through them together, Yan watching as Sandreas experienced them, feeling how he processed the experience of--

Yan, so small, stepping onto a planet for the first time in her life. The sun above a tempered bronze-- how had she never intimately known that there was a connection between Light and Heat? And suddenly, suddenly, no walls around her. No walls, no suit, nothing but the vastness of the dusty blue sky, the endless sandy horizon, the wind whipping in her face so hard that she felt she couldn't breathe through it. Yan couldn't hold her own emotions at bay as she showed this scene to Sandreas, though she did manage to keep it an instant, frozen in time, waiting to see what he would do next.

He took in the feeling of being in Yan's small body, the overwhelming sensations of being in the world, and he responded as though drawing upon his own memories. 

What had he provided, so many years ago, to someone else feeling this lost? What did this small Yan want in this moment? Stability. Direction.

The curiosity would come later, but right now it was reassurance that was needed. Sandreas took control of the memory, more like a dream, and turned Yan around, looking for the adult sure to be behind her. There--

It had been her mother who had taken her down to Terlin, that first time, though only the once. After that, it had always been her uncle Maxes. But here in this memory, Yan clung to her mother's legs as though they could stop her from drowning in the air of this wide open world, and her mother had stroked her braided hair, even as Yan squeezed her eyes closed. 

Stability, direction.

It was one of the most powerful memories she had, and Yan was lost in it. Sandreas allowed this to continue, letting Yan's mind drift as it may. His curiosity was a muted undercurrent to their shared thoughts.

Yan thought about her mother for a fraction of a second too long, and, as it always did when that happened, was spun to a different point in her memory. Before she opened her eyes, she could feel in this memory how old she was, how her baby teeth had left holes in her mouth, and how she was up in space again, her hand pressed to a cold window. She was floating there, in a viewing area aboard the _Iron Dreams_ , watching the adults work outside, loading great shipping containers from the station into the bays.

Although Yan knew exactly what was about to happen in this memory, she was powerless to stop it running its course through her brain. 

One of the adults outside the ship flew past the window, firing their suit jets to stop when they saw Yan looking out at them. Yan knew it was her mother, though she couldn't see her face through the suit helmet. Yan waved, and her mother signed through the window, "Go to bed."

Tiny Yan stuck out her tongue, and her mother made a shooing motion, then flew away. Yan would have obeyed the instruction to leave, but she stayed to watch her mother work for just one more minute.

One of the jets aboard the shipping containers, the ones that were supposed to send them drifting into the bays, misfired, sending the box that must have massed thousands of tons into a wild and silent spin. Most of the adults scattered out of the way, but Yan's mother was not so lucky.

Yan was as helpless to stop watching as she was to stop the box from crashing into her mother, in a sequence that seemed to stretch and warp and slow, neverending--

Sandreas had the ability to pull out of the memory, though, and he did, dragging both their minds loose from the meditation with an almost physical snap. When they came back to their own bodies, they were both breathing heavily, shaken.

Yan snatched her hands back from his as though she had been burned. She wanted nothing more than to run away.

"Be careful with meditation," Sandreas said to her. "It's a dangerous tool. I hope you found what you were looking for."

Yan was frozen for a second, then she stood rapidly, almost knocking the chair over behind her in her haste. "Thank you for the interview; thank you for paying for dinner," she said, the words tumbling out of her far too quickly in her urge to make a quick exit.

"Dinner?" Sandreas asked, looking confused. Then a spark of recognition lit his face. "Oh, you should thank Halen for that."

"I'll let you know my answer," Yan said, which was as much of a goodbye as she could muster. It was all she could do to walk, rather than run, out of the room. Sandreas’s impression of her was probably irreparably damaged, and she didn't care at all who Halen was; she just wanted to get away as fast as possible.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Jade for the beta read.


	4. Divorce Court

Yan was inconsolable on her bed, laying facedown on her pillow with her shoes still on her feet, dangling off the edge. The afternoon sun streamed in through the window and lit a warm square on her back. She lay there for what felt like an eternity, until her sobs subsided into messy tears, and those receded into mere hiccoughs, and even that slowed to the occasional sniffle.

In reality, she probably hadn't been laying there for very long. The door to her apartment opened with a bang, revealing Sylva bearing a fancy coffee in each hand and a bag of pastries held in her teeth. Sylva must have heard Yan's prolonged sniffle, because she came into Yan's room and flopped down on the bed, stepping lightly over the few discarded pairs of pants and shirts on the floor.

"Fucked it up that bad, hunh?" Sylva said, sounding altogether too pleased. "I got you a coffee in celebration."

Yan could barely bring herself to roll over and sit up. She was a pathetic sight, with tear streaked face and puffy red eyes. 

"Xenobio it is, then," Sylva said gamely. She handed Yan the iced coffee, and Yan wordlessly pressed the cold cup to her eyes, as if it could stop the horrible aggravated feeling they had. 

The pastry bag turned out to contain chocolate chip cookies, the big good ones from the expensive bakery on campus, and Yan nibbled her way through one of them and downed half of her coffee before she could string a coherent sentence together. Sylva wrapped her arm around Yan's back and rested her head on her shoulder, and they both leaned back against the headboard of the bed, getting cookie crumbs all over Yan's blue bedspread.

"You gonna tell me what happened?" Sylva asked finally.

Yan recounted the whole story then, stumbling over the words but feeling better as she got it out of her. When she got to the part about thanking First Sandreas for dinner, she actually laughed. "I don't know why I thought that I needed to say that. He was so confused." A chuckle and a sniffle.

"Did he look like he didn't want you as an apprentice?"

"I wouldn't want me as an apprentice after I made myself look like such an idiot."

Sylva bit her lip, then poked Yan in the side. "I'm not saying this for my benefit, because I want you to take the xenobio job, but I think you're being hard on yourself for no reason."

Yan frowned, not speaking.

"He clearly wants you," Sylva continued. "Fuck, Yan, he let you into his head. That has to be more vulnerable for him than it is for you, even if you accidentally, you know, did that. He wanted you to trust him. I don't think you had to do anything to win him over."

"Why though?" Yan asked. It was the question that kept tumbling around and around in her mind. She had done nothing but make bad impression after bad impression on Sandreas.

Sylva shrugged. "You said there were two others? Who were they? Maybe there's some similarities."

"Sid Welslak and Kino Mejia." Sylva made a face, a not very pleasant one. "What?" Yan asked.

"Yeah, you have absolutely nothing in common with those weirdos."

"You don't have to be mean," Yan said. "They're fine."

"High praise. A ringing endorsement." Sylva frowned.

"What?"

"Well, if that's who you're competing with, then no wonder First Sandreas wants you."

Yan disentangled herself from Sylva's arm. "I don't understand the issue you have with them. It's not like they ever did anything to you."

Sylva huffed but didn't respond. Yan rolled her eyes. At least dealing with Sylva's fresh bad mood had distracted her slightly from her own misery. Yan pulled her phone out of her pocket and pulled up the Academy student directory.

"What are you doing?" Sylva asked, trying to lean over to see the screen, but Yan held the phone out of Sylva's view until she had finished what she was doing, which was looking up the phone numbers of Kino and Sid and sending them a message. Once that was done, she dropped her phone on her lap, and Sylva immediately picked it up to investigate.

"You're really going to talk to them?" Sylva asked, reading the group text Yan had just sent.

"I should. I think."

Sylva dropped the phone as if it were a live insect when it buzzed in reply. Sid had responded, saying that he could meet whenever.

"If you take the apprenticeship, they'll be your competition. If you don't, they're just weird. I don't know what you'll get out of talking to them." Yan didn't have the strength to try to convince Sylva to have less of a sudden grudge against Kino and Sid, so she just shook her head.

* * *

Yan met Kino and Sid that night on the back lawn outside the library. It was a meeting place that Sid had suggested, though Yan didn't know what particular import it carried for him. It was a nice spot, at the top of the huge hill with the library lit at their backs, looking out over the last vestiges of city. The city lights ended abruptly in thick forest about ten kilometers distant from where they sat, just at the edge of their visibility now. It was a clear night, not foggy, with a mild chilly breeze that pushed thin clouds across the sky, casting the scene into bursts of shadow when one of them scuttled in front of the large full moon. 

Sid was already waiting for Yan when she arrived, stretched out on the grass with his eyes closed. The slope of the hill was steep enough that Sid seemed almost vertical. Yan sat down next to him. When he didn't move, she realized it was because he could neither see nor hear her approach. She agonized for half a second about what to do, then ended up gently shaking his shoulder.

He sat up with a wide grin and waved hello, then held up one finger, indicating that she should wait for a second. She waited, unsure of what she was waiting for, but then she felt him use the power, holding out his hand and squinting his eyes, until a glowing ball of air formed, intensely hot, which he 'tossed' up above them. It was a simple trick for creating light, though really only good for use in places where nothing was liable to catch fire.

"What did you think of your interview?" he signed, then fingerspelled 'interview' when Yan looked confused.

She shook her head. "I did bad."

Sid raised an eyebrow. "Did he take back his offer?"

"No." She pulled the card that had his number written on it out of her pocket, flipped it over in her hands a few times. She narrowed her eyes at Sid, and her fingers felt clumsy as she signed, "What other offers do you have?"

He shrugged as he answered. "Fleet. Some architect." Again, he needed to fingerspell. 

"I got the Academy." She knew the sign for that, at least, steepling her hands together, then opening them like a book. "And..." She gave up and spelled xenobiology.

The sign, as Sid repeated it to her, were the signs for space and life, up at the forehead. 

"Are you going to go with First Sandreas?" Yan asked.

Before Sid could respond, Kino appeared in Yan's peripheral vision, coming over the top of the hill and sitting down in front of them. She was out of uniform, not wearing her Academy cassock, just a tank top and long pants. It had been a pleasant spring day, but Yan found it hard to imagine that Kino wasn't cold.

"Glad you could come," Yan said aloud. "We were just talking about our interviews."

Kino nodded. "I'm going to take his offer," she said, her voice peculiarly monotone.

"Oh," Yan said, rather startled. 

"You could have teased us with that information," Sid said, speaking aloud for the first time. He had a low voice, and he spoke slowly but clearly.

"Why?" Kino asked. "It's not a secret. I already told First Sandreas yes."

"After the interview?" Yan clarified.

"While I was with him."

"You weren't worried about coming off as overeager?" Sid asked.

"I had no other offers," Kino said.

"Really?" Yan asked, unable to keep the surprise out of her voice, even though it was probably rude.

Kino stared at her, her dark eyes piercing. She wasn't quite looking in Yan's eyes, but Yan found it a studying gaze nonetheless. "If I have one offer that I can live with, it's no different than having seven."

Sid's hands flashed, a quick movement that Yan caught only the tail end of. "Crazy," he signed. 

Kino narrowed her eyes at him, and Sid smiled broadly. Yan could tell that the relationship between the two of them was not off to a good start. Maybe Sylva was right, but, no, she couldn't think like that. Sid seemed nice, and Kino seemed intense, but not necessarily in a bad way.

"What about you?" Yan signed. "Will you take it?"

"What are you saying to him?" Kino asked.

"Just asking if he was going to take the offer."

"Of course," Sid signed. "It's not a choice."

Sid had expressed the exact feeling that Yan had, but didn't want to put into words. She didn't want to admit at all that it was true. She was standing at a crossroads, xenobiology on one hand, the whole of the Empire on the other. There was no way she could take the xenobiology road without living the rest of her life consumed with curiosity about what would have happened should she have picked the other path. 

She saw where the xenobio path led: the map was as clear as any starchart. She would take the job, gain experience, do well as she always had, perhaps be assigned to starting some new colony, terraforming or studying the life there. She could rise through the ranks, maybe to even the heights of being the leader of a colony herself. It would be a full life, and all that she had imagined for herself up to now, but it was a life that she could imagine in its entirety.

Why had she been interested in xenobiology in the first place? Because of that moment, wondrous and divine, when she had first learned about all the teeming life that inhabited planets. She had been filled with a burning curiosity, a desire to connect with the vastness of life outside the well worn and comfortable hallways of her family's starship.

She couldn't turn away from that. She knew it in her heart. Sandreas clearly understood as well. Though he hadn't put it into words, in their shared mind space, he had communicated to her succinctly that he was willing to provide guidance (stability and direction, she thought) in the wide and open future, terrifying and too bright.

Her reverie was interrupted when Kino turned to her and asked. "And you? Will you take the apprenticeship?"

She felt like she was on a knife edge. "Should I?" She kept asking this question, as if anyone could answer it but herself.

Kino stared at her with an intensity, an almost angry one, that made Yan flinch back. When Kino spoke, she quoted the theology. "Can you bear the weight and remain an upright man?"

The damp grass stabbed into the palms of Yan's hands, and she looked away from Kino, out over the buildings of Yora, and up at the starry sky. She could have quoted the theology right back, but she didn't. "I hope so," she said.

Kino nodded, then stood, dusting her pants off. "I hope so, too."

"You're leaving already?" For some reason, Yan had expected this conversation to go on much longer, for them all to get to know each other. But Kino seemed unwilling to engage in anything but the most direct communication of information. That having been accomplished, she wanted to leave on her own business.

"I'll be around," Kino said, and then was off, loping down the side of the hill towards Yora proper, her braids flapping behind her head.

Sid stood as well, watching her go, before signing to Yan, "We will have an interesting time." He helped her to her feet before she could answer, almost sending them both tumbling down the hill. Yan's legs had fallen asleep, causing her to wobble as she stood.

"Will we work well together?" she asked.

"You and me?" Sid grinned again and winked. "Sure. I like you. We can be friends."

"And Kino?"

"I only like people who sign."

Yan laughed and shook her head, unable to tell how much Sid was kidding. Kino was a tiny dot at the bottom of the hill now, so Yan and Sid began their walk back together through campus, with Sid's ball of light hovering obediently over their heads, casting dual shadows whenever they passed through the glow of a streetlamp along the path.

"Doing anything this break?" Yan asked.

"Going home to visit family." He launched into a description of his family, one that included so much vocabulary that Yan didn't know that she could barely follow it. She learned that he had a younger sister (named in his story only with a sign for apple circled round his face) and an older brother ('dirt' in one hand, 'foot' in the other, tapped together over his chest), but that was the extent of the information that she gleaned from his telling. He lived on a farm on Galena, but Yan didn't have much farm-related sign. She made a mental note to practice sign vocabulary on the  _ Dreams  _ over the summer. It might be difficult, since everyone there also only had general and technical vocabulary for spacewalks, but she could find some educational videos, maybe. It would give her something to do.

"What are you called?" Yan asked. "Just so I know."

He grinned his wide grin once again-- it seemed to be a perpetual feature of his face, but Yan couldn't say she minded it. He slowly made the sign for 'egg' and knocked it hard against his own bald head.

* * *

Packing up the apartment that she shared with Sylva turned out to be an unexpectedly trying thing to do. It wasn't that Yan had much in the way of belongings, but Sylva was in a terrible funk, and trying to pry apart their shared possessions was an unpleasant negotiation.

"It's like we're getting divorced," Yan joked while pulling mugs out of the kitchen cabinet and trying to decide whose box of kitchenware each would go in. While Yan held up a mug covered with leaping frogs and tried to remember who had originally purchased it, Sylva scowled at the ground.

"I wanted you to live with me," she said.

"I know. I can't, though," Yan said. She decided that she probably liked frogs more than Sylva did, so the mug ended up in her own box. "First Sandreas is providing me an apartment."

"You could have said no." And Yan could have said no to the apprenticeship as a whole, which was really what Sylva was frustrated about. But she hadn't. She had sent First Sandreas a message saying that she would take the apprenticeship, and the next day a package full of notes about where she would be living, and her new documentation as an employee of the Imperial government, and all kinds of other important papers had arrived at her doorstep. It had been accompanied by a new cassock and cape, blood red like the one she had seen First Sandreas wear, but shorter and far less impressive. Still, it was made out of a fabric that was nicer than any of her well worn Academy uniforms. Things moved fast in Sandreas's camp, apparently.

Yan didn't respond to Sylva's aggravation, just continued splitting the mugs. Maybe she should just give them all to Sylva. The note had said that her new place would be furnished. But the objects that she had collected over the years seemed hopelessly nostalgic to her; parting with them would have felt too much like cutting ties with this segment of her life.

"Are you looking forward to going back on the  _ Dreams _ ?" Yan asked, attempting to break the tension. Since Sylva had been easily able to rent an apartment on the outskirts of the city, she would be able to spend her summer break with Yan aboard her family's ship.

"It beats spending the summer with my family," she grumbled, but was still clearly glad to be coming. "I guess I should be happy I get to monopolize your time for a bit longer, before you spend all your time being important, and stuff."

Yan sighed. "We're not going to be that far away from each other. You can come see me literally whenever. And I'll text you, I promise." She opened the fridge and started examining condiments there, then decided that they should probably all be thrown out. She tossed them one by one into the garbage, correcting their course with a nudge from the power when her throws went wide. "And I guess I should warn you, I don't know how much time we'll even be able to spend together when we're on the  _ Dreams _ . Captain Pellon said that I could try my hand at being a navigator, so I'll be on the bridge most of the time."

"As long as you still let me stay in your room."

Yan laughed. "Of course. I'm not going to kick you out."

"I can't believe we're really graduating." Sylva stared out of the open window, down towards the courtyard. The bright new spring leaves of the trees rustled gently in the wind, and the smell of fresh cut grass filled their apartment.

"Can't stop getting older, I guess."

"Yeah." Sylva dropped a stack of textbooks on the floor with a thud, having pulled them off the bookshelf. "Do you want any of these, or are we donating them?"

"Donate." Thick xenobiology coursebooks were useless to Yan now. How strange it seemed, that the course of her life could be diverted in an instant, and all the hours she had put into study had been for nothing. Well, perhaps not nothing.

Sylva began peeling posters off the walls, once the books were sorted, rolling them all into tubes and taping them shut. The apartment they had been living in for years felt more like a stranger's place with every passing second. It twisted Yan's heart. As she dumped out the kitchen junk drawer to sort through it on the table, she had an idea. A thick permanent marker had been in the drawer, and she twirled it around in her fingers before walking over to the shared living room closet. Sylva watched her curiously. 

"What are you doing? I already cleaned that," Sylva said. 

"I know." Yan's voice was muffled as she looked around the interior of the closet, a weird, skinny thing that went deep into the wall. Sylva came around behind her, wedging herself past the clothing bar with some difficulty, now blocking Yan's exit.

Yan had already uncapped the marker, and she was considering the best place to leave her mark. She glanced back at Sylva. "Here okay?"

Sylva rolled her eyes. "I'm sure the next students in here will love that we're scribbling all over their closet."

"They won't care." Yan wrote her name in neat block letters on the wall, then handed the marker to Sylva, who had to press herself quite hard against Yan in order to reach this deep part of the closet. Rather less gracefully, Sylva added '+ Sylva Calor' and the year.

"Perfect," Yan said.

Sylva seemed frozen, staring at it for a long moment in the dim light of the closet. Yan didn't try to move, even though Sylva's elbow was digging uncomfortably into her stomach. After a second, Yan became aware that Sylva was crying, or at least breathing very strangely.

"Hey, it's okay," Yan said, awkwardly trying to pat Sylva's shoulder.

Sylva turned around in the closet, wrapping her arms around Yan's midsection and burying her head in Yan's shoulder. Yan stood stiffly until she remembered how her arms were supposed to go, and she hugged Sylva back, rocking gently side to side in the closet.

"Shh," Yan said. "It's fine-- I'm not going anywhere-- it's okay." These platitudes failed to comfort Sylva, though, and she held on to Yan as though she were drowning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Jade for the beta read.


	5. A Lesson in Power

Aymon swiped through his tablet, reading snatches of the report that had been made on his new apprentices for the second or third time. He flipped past pictures of Sid sitting at the kitchen table of his family's farmhouse on Galena, leaned over waist deep in the guts of a tractor engine, and accompanying his older brother to the bar in town. Similarly, there were plenty of pictures of Yan enjoying her summer break with her family: working navigation on the bridge of the starship  _ Iron Dreams _ , eating dinner with her friend Calor, taking shore leave on Byforest Station. It was an amalgamation of all sorts of quotidian images, taken from video surveillance cameras that had been placed on the ship by an Imperial agent. 

It was only Kino whose photographic record was spotty at best. Although she was physically the closest to Aymon by far-- she had remained in her tiny Academy apartment over the summer-- she had also been almost completely unsurveillable. Kino had immediately found and destroyed the cameras that had been placed in her apartment, and she had sent a text to Aymon asking him to respect her privacy, please. He had been annoyed, but Halen had laughed and acquiesced. He had not had someone reinstall the cameras. 

It was Halen's policy that if the students could thwart his surveillance, they had the right to. In some ways, it was more teaching them to be their own safeguards than anything, a lesson that Kino had apparently learned already. Even without the cameras, though, when Kino left her apartment (a surprisingly rare event), she was uniquely hard to follow. She didn't even seem to be doing it on purpose; pursuers simply slid off her like raindrops slid off an oiled coat. Halen had been patient, though, and one of his staff was finally persistent enough to figure out where Kino went.

It was annoying to learn the answer, but it was not a problem that couldn't be dealt with delicately over time. The first day of his apprentices being with him was probably not that time, though.

"They've made it through security," Halen said. "Should be just a minute, now."

"They're together?"

"They're presenting a unified front, at least," Halen said. He must have been watching them with the power, tracking them as they moved through the halls of Stonecourt, since he wasn't looking at his phone and the security system. Instead, Halen was just looking out the window behind Aymon's heavy wooden desk, watching birds flit across the sunlit courtyard outside.

Aymon put down the tablet on his desk. He wasn't going to learn anything new from a report he had already studied cover to cover. "Is it wrong that I feel nervous?"

"I'm sure teachers get jitters on the first day of school as much as the students do," Halen said. "You're going to be stuck with them for a while."

"The rest of my natural and unnatural life, you mean," Aymon said with a slight frown. He had been resistant to the idea of taking apprentices for a long time, because it meant, in a way, admitting that he was getting older. He was no longer young at all, and he needed to ensure that the line of Voices was unbroken, which meant training a successor to take over for him. That time would be in the far distant future, he hoped. They day that he would relinquish his position would not be a happy one. Thinking about it put him in a sour mood.

"I can understand you wanting to make a good second impression. Or third, for Yan."

Aymon made a noncommittal noise. "I'm sure that any opinions they have of me are more set by what they've seen on the news than what they thought of our interviews."

"Of course, but they're going to be forming a much closer impression of you starting now."

"I'm not sure which of us has the other at an advantage." Aymon drummed his fingers on the desktop in impatience. "I certainly hope they won't annoy me too much."

"It would only be fair, considering what you put Herrault through."

Aymon laughed at that. "It was hardly only my fault."

"They're outside the door."

Aymon stood. A long second later, there was a knock, probably from his secretary, Ms. Rosario. "Come in."

The heavy wooden door swung open, and his three new apprentices almost tumbled inside the room. Ms. Rosario offered Sandreas a smile over the top of Kino's head, then shut the door behind herself, stranding the apprentices in the room with him.

It was the first time that Aymon had seen the three of them together. They stood as though they had some familiarity with each other; Yan and Sid were bumping elbows. All of them seemed frozen, unsure of what to do or say.

Kino was looking around the room furtively, taking in the sunny white walls, bookshelves with well chosen mementoes, the famously photographed desk, the couches, and coffee table with a Book of Songs laying open on its glossy surface. Her left hand was prying at her right sleeve, tugging the button of her cassock almost all the way off.

Sid had a wide smile on his face and a mischievous glint in his eye. He leaned forward slightly, resting on the balls of his feet, and he had his hands loosely in his pockets.

Yan stood stiffly upright, the tension evident in the controlled hunch of her shoulders. She looked back and forth between Aymon and Halen, clearly not happy, but she kept that emotion off her face and wore a thin, professional smile, replacing nervousness or anger.

"Welcome to Stonecourt," Aymon said, after half a second of letting them stew. "Please, take a seat." He gestured to one of the couches and all three jumped to obey, sitting down as if it were some kind of competition. Yan ended up in the middle of the other two. At a much less frantic pace, Aymon made his way over to the opposite couch, sharing a brief look of amusement with Halen on his way.

"I trust you all had a pleasant summer?" Aymon asked. 

There was a brief moment of silence, then Yan spoke up. "Yes, sir."

"Is Ms. BarCarran the only one of you who has a voice?"

"Maybe," Sid said with a cheeky grin. "Sir."

Aymon clamped down on his own amusement and just gave Sid a look. He would cut down on false politeness now. "There's no need to be so formal when we're in private," he said. "You're going to be spending-- I hope it's a good long time-- with me, so we might as well get used to each other now. You can call me Aymon or Sandreas, whichever you prefer."

If Sid was crestfallen at having the tactic of 'waiting just a little too long to be polite to someone' taken away from him immediately, he didn't look it, and continued to smile and meet Aymon's eyes. Yan, judging by her face, seemed to have made up her mind that she was going to call him 'Sandreas', first names be damned. Kino watched the exchange with no change in expression, still silent and twisting the sleeve of her cassock.

"Personally, I think the best introduction that we can make with each other is by pretending that we are already well acquainted. The philosophy of apprenticeships is in learning by doing, of course. I wish I could say that I'll be putting you all to work immediately, but I think that that would be an overestimation of both of our capabilities," Aymon said. "Quite obviously, I've never had apprentices before, so this will be a learning experience for all of us." Halen was right, he sounded just like some kind of teacher, and not a very good one. "I suppose I should lay down some ground information, shouldn't I?" 

The three apprentices nodded at him, following Yan's lead. She had her eyes fixed on him, steadfastly ignoring Halen over by the window.

"Right. I'm going to be announcing that I have taken apprentices at the Governor's Dinner, which is coming up in two weeks. That will be your first public appearance, and the first thing I'm going to require of you. That should give us all at least enough time to settle ourselves into this new arrangement, before I start giving you serious work." He smiled, trying not to make it sound too much like a threat. Aymon was used to dealing with known quantities: politicians with agendas. It was odd to not have that be the case, and it left him floundering. Since the apprentices weren't providing much in the way of visible feedback to his words, he just had to keep going.

"In these two weeks, you're going to receive a crash course on how to protect yourself. It's an unfortunate fact of life that as soon as you become a visible public figure, especially one close to me, you become a target. I'd like to minimize the chances of one of you dying immediately. I believe I mentioned this to you already, Yan."

"You did," she said, and glanced at the other two, surprised that he hadn't said that to them.

"Sadly for you," Aymon said, this time with a broad smile and sweeping look across his three apprentices. "I don't have time to spend teaching you the basics of self defense."

"We had self defense at the Academy," Sid interjected. It was a relief that he did, allowing Aymon to play off his words.

"And I learned how to cook from my mother," Aymon said with a wave of his hand. "That doesn't mean that I could serve a three course meal. You may not know this, but the Academy masters have a vested interest in all their students not being able to hurt each other." Aymon's voice was dry as chalk.

Kino's lips twitched in a tiny smile, perhaps despite herself. Aymon took that as a victory.

"So, as I was saying, I will not be teaching you that on a daily basis." At least not for now, he thought. "And, until you're publicly announced as my apprentices, I can't be dragging you along through my day either. That means that, for the next two weeks, you will be at Halen's mercy."

Yan stiffened immediately, as Aymon had expected she would. Sid simply looked confused.

Halen took his cue to come over, and he stood behind the couch on which Aymon sat, looking down at the apprentices with a placid expression. "You're heart's beating like a drum, kid," Halen said, looking at Yan. "I'd think it's obvious that I'm not here to hurt you."

Yan's lips were pressed tightly together, and she refused to look at his face, instead looking slightly over Sandreas's shoulder. 

Sid's hand crept out of his pocket, and in his lap he fingerspelled something too fast for Aymon to catch, directed at Yan. Aymon didn't sign, but he knew the alphabet, if the person signing it went slow enough.

"Halen is my personal assistant, something like my aide-de-camp, if he were in the Fleet. I trust him with my life. If he tells you to do something, consider it as though it were an order coming directly from me. Do you understand?"

He waited until all three apprentices had mumbled some variation of 'yes' before he continued.

"Excellent. As long as you keep that in mind, you should have no problems." Although he wasn't looking at Halen, Aymon knew he would be amused by that pronouncement. Aymon glanced at the clock. "Do you have any questions? I know this is all very abrupt, but I only have an hour before I need to meet with Admiral Vaalks, so if you don't, I'd like to begin your first lesson quickly."

"You're coming?" Halen asked.

"I figure a practical demonstration is warranted." 

Yan and Sid both looked like they had questions, but it seemed that Yan was not going to ask for the sake of time and politeness. Sid was not going to ask because Aymon looked him in the eye and raised an eyebrow, silently asking if the questions on the tip of Sid's tongue (or the tip of his fingers, more natively) were actually relevant. He felt instinctively that Sid was much like his own younger self, and thus he had some handle on how to control him at this moment. It would probably get more difficult as time went on and Sid grew more used to the limits and freedoms of his role, but for this moment, a wily smile was an easy boundary to push and prod at, an easy, silent negotiation for them both to have.

"Well, if there are no questions..."

"Why doesn't Yan like you?" Kino asked abruptly, staring at Halen. Sid twitched forward and looked at her. Apparently that had been the question that he was about to ask. 

"Oh, she didn't already tell you?" Halen asked. Aymon knew that voice. It was the voice he used when he was smiling, with teeth. "I used to be a pirate, and she used to be a spacer. We're natural enemies."

"It's not 'used to be,'" Yan muttered, then bit her lip, looking down at her lap.

"Oh, you're not a spacer anymore," Halen said. "You haven't been since you were hauled off to the Academy, and you certainly aren't one now."

Aymon wished they would drop the subject. He recognized the tone in Halen's voice, a melancholy sound. They almost never talked seriously about Halen's past, and it surprised Aymon that Halen was willing to be so immediately open with the apprentices. 

Yan had caught Halen's change in tone too, because her face, which had been previously twisted and averted in a stifled anger and embarrassment, stilled, and she glanced at Halen for a second with involuntary sympathy rather than rancor. Then the mask was on again, and she looked at Aymon with a stiff smile.

Aymon stood. "Let's not waste time on the past," he said. "You'll all have plenty of time to get to know each other, I'm sure." He headed out of his office, stopping in front of his secretary's desk. "If Vaalks comes while I'm out, tell him I'll be here as soon as I can." He began to leave again.

"Of course, sir," Ms. Rosario said. "And I have a message for you from Guildmaster Vaneik."

Aymon resisted the urge to sigh heavily, stopping in his tracks. "And what does he have to say?"

"He says he's looking forward to discussing the Olar situation with you at the Governor's Dinner."

"I'm sure he is," Aymon said.

"Do you want to send a reply?"

"How long until he's out of contact range?"

"Six hours."

"Then I have until then to come up with an answer." He turned again and left for real this time, leading his apprentices like a row of ducklings down the hallways of Stonecourt. People he passed in the hallway were curious about the new apprentices, so even those who were well used to seeing Aymon around had a reason to stop and stare. In an otherwise unoccupied stairwell, Aymon said to his apprentices, "Don't mind people around here. They'll get used to you soon enough."

"And," Halen said, his voice echoing off the concrete walls, "they have strict orders not to bother you, at least for now."

There was no response from the three, focused on hustling to keep up with Aymon's brisk pace down these hallways that were so unfamiliar to them. They made it to one of the sub basements of Stonecourt, and finally into the suite of training rooms that were kept down there. Halen used them, as did the elite security team that answered just to him, but that wasn't a very large group of people. Right now, they were in the simplest room, a harshly lit, wide open space that could be used for target practice or for general recreation. Along the back wall where they had entered, there were tall locked cabinets full of equipment, and the opposite wall had targets set up.

"I'll let you take the lead here," Aymon said to Halen. "This is more your domain than mine."

"Oh, and here I thought you had come to be helpful." Halen clapped his hands and looked at the apprentices. "Alright. Raise your hand if you've ever been in a situation that almost killed you." It was an abrupt change of tone, but Halen had never been one to waste time when there was work to be done.

Only Kino raised her hand, and Yan seemed startled by it. "I was on Falmar," Kino said, by way of explanation, voice completely flat. "Does that count?"

"It was a poorly phrased question. You've never been in a fight, though?"

"Not one that would have killed me," Kino said with a shrug.

"And you, Yan? Was the  _ Iron Dreams _ ever attacked by those pirates you hate so much?" Halen smiled.

"Before I was born," Yan said, looking steadfastly across the room, not directly at Halen.

"Maybe it's for the best that you don't already have experience when it comes to survival," Halen said. "I won't have to break any bad habits."

"Bad habits?" Sid asked. "It would be pretty weird if any of us had made a habit of getting almost killed."

"Maybe that was another poor choice of words on my part," Halen said, but didn't clarify what he meant. "Let's start with a bit of a quiz. If someone were attacking you, what would your first instinct be?"

"What are they attacking me with? Where am I? What resources do I have?" Sid asked.

Aymon pursed his lips, leaning back against one of the cabinets. "It's a general hypothetical, Sid. Fight, flight, or freeze."

"I'd take cover," Yan said, sounding thoughtful. "If I could. That would give me a second to think."

Kino shook her head. "Better to just get out if you can."

Sid crossed his arms and frowned. "You're not going to have the opportunity to get out. Anyone who's after you who's smart would have blocked off the exits."

"You're not wrong," Halen said. "There are times when sheltering in place or running will be good options, but most of the time, they won't be. If you pick bad cover, for example, you could end up entrenching yourself in an indefensible or inescapable position. If you try to run, you can run directly into someplace even worse than where you were. But, of course, if you give yourself the ability to fight back, and have tools ready to defend yourself with, running or hiding become more viable options."

"Have any of you ever used the power to fight before?" Aymon asked.

Yan and Kino both shook their heads no. It was Sid, of course, who had a clarifying question. "It depends on what you mean by fight, and use the power."

With exaggerated patience, Aymon said, "Well?"

Suddenly Sid seemed embarrassed, as though he remembered exactly where he was. His hands twitched a little, and he jammed them into his pockets. "I used to throw things at my siblings. Probably doesn't count."

"I'd say not," Halen said. "Since I assume you weren't actually trying to hurt them."

"The masters would punish anyone who was caught fighting with the power," Yan said. "You said they had a vested interest in students not being able to hurt each other."

"I'm aware," Aymon said. "The power can be a deadly weapon, if you have the strength to use it that way."

"You mean like stopping someone's heart?" Sid asked. "We're going to learn to do that?"

"Do you want to learn how to do that?" Halen asked. It was a loaded question, and he stared directly at Sid, who, to his credit, did not flinch.

"Has it ever mattered to a teacher if I wanted to learn something or not?" Sid shot back, a weird bitterness in the squint of his eyes.

Silence fell for a second as Halen appraised Sid. "Did you ever try to use the power on someone else?"

"Yeah. Of course I tried."

"And what happened?"

"Nothing." He had a defensive posture now, his arms crossed.

Halen nodded. "I'm not surprised. Using the power on someone else's body is the most difficult thing that you can do. Do they ever talk about that, at the Academy of yours?"

"Only to tell people not to try it," Yan said. "I think a lot of people tried it and then decided that it was impossible."

"It's not impossible," Halen said. "Just very difficult. So much so that I doubt any of you will be able to do it for several years."

Yan nodded and Kino was still, both apparently willing to accept that answer. Sid, on the other hand, pressed on. "Why not? It seems like, if we're going to learn to defend ourselves, that should be the first thing we learn."

Halen glanced at Aymon, a look Aymon knew well, a request for permission. Aymon gave an almost imperceptible nod. He didn't know exactly what Halen was going to do, but perhaps it would be best if Sid learned this lesson now.

"Did anyone ever explain to you why you shouldn't try to use the power on someone else?" Halen asked. "Aside from the obvious answer that it's difficult, and the Academy doesn't want to give its students the tools to hurt each other."

Sid shrugged. "I might not have been paying attention when they did."

Halen continued as though Sid hadn't said anything. "After all, there's so many uses for it that aren't even hurtful. Wouldn't it be useful for someone with the power to be able to set a broken bone, for example? Or to be able to pull someone out of harm's way? And I'm sure you can imagine the kinds of fun that the oldest Academy students might like to have." Sid laughed a little at that.

Aymon inserted himself into the conversation. It would probably be easier to come at this from an academic angle that the three students understood well, rather than Halen's instinctive understanding of how the power worked. "Kino, what's the third precept?"

She blinked in surprise, probably not expecting a theological quiz at that second, but she answered as second nature. "We are cloth woven from the same thread."

"Yan, third verse of the Creation Canto."

Yan closed her eyes as she strained to remember, tapping her hand against her side as she mentally fast-forwarded through the song to get to the third verse. When she did start singing, Aymon noted idly that she had a nice voice, full bodied and clear. "From the darkness woven, with the light entwined, each single human body, a piece of greater kind. The stars are not self-knowing, no heart or soul or mind. To us God gave the universe; to us God gave the light. To see as God does see us, to speak with the God’s own voice, we recognize ourselves in the others that we find--"

Aymon held up a hand for her to stop there. "Thank you. As the theology says, we are each a piece of the universe that has been given the divine spark of life. I'm sure you've been told to think of using the power as being able to exert your will onto the rest of the universe, thinking of it as an extension of yourself, correct?"

Yan nodded, a contemplative look on her face. Sid was impatient, and Kino was merely listening.

"That's all well and good for inanimate objects, and it's even a great way to think about how two people meditating together works. But the universe resists you enforcing your will on other sentient parts of itself. It's a violation. It requires a strength of mind, and a willingness to completely overcome another person's self."

"Like rape," Kino said, voice very flat, as though that was a simple fact.

"It's a tool, like any other," Aymon said. "A hammer can be used to build, or it can be used to kill. The same is true of that use of the power. But you have to have the strength to do either, and the power will fight you."

"I see that you still don't get it," Halen said, looking at Sid. "Would you prefer a demonstration?"

Sid looked as though he was trying very hard to keep his arrogant front up. "Sure."

"Very well." Halen didn't smile. Yan flinched back for some reason, though Halen hadn't even done anything, and certainly wasn't going to do anything to her. Sid's face shifted suddenly, and his right arm, which had been folded across his chest, stretched out in front of him, palm up. He curled and uncurled his fingers slowly. "How does that feel?" Halen asked.

"Weird," Sid said, mouth pressed into a thin line. His fingers kept moving, opening and closing his fist over and over. He tried to move his arm, pulling his shoulder back, but his arm was frozen in place in the air. "Let me go."

Halen didn't let him go for a second longer, enough to make Sid truly uncomfortable. "It takes a mental strength to learn a skill that would allow you to kill someone with so little as a thought." 

He let Sid's arm go, and Sid looked at his hand and rubbed it, as if to make sure it really was his. 

"You'll learn eventually," Aymon said. "But probably not for a while." Sid was shaken enough not to argue, as was Yan, who probably wouldn't have argued anyway. Kino was the only one who was just nodding, seemingly unaffected by the demonstration.

"We've wasted enough time on this tangent," Halen said, snapping back into his most professional demeanor. "My goal today is to get you up to the most basic level of self defense. Do any of you have experience with firearms?"

"I do," Sid said. When Yan gave him a curious glance, he shrugged and said, "I lived on a farm. Shooting bottles is one of the only fun things to do on Galena."

"Good." Halen glanced at the clock on the wall above the door. "You have to get going soon."

"I can stay for another minute or two," Aymon said.

"Alright, well, I suppose I'll use you for the practical demonstration while I have you here, and I can go over basic gun safety when you leave." He turned back to the apprentices and fished through his pocket for a second, pulling out a rock a couple centimeters in diameter. He held it up for a second, then tossed it to Kino, who caught it deftly.

"Kino, I want you to pretend like that rock is a bullet, and I want you to hit the target with it." He pointed across the room and moved out of Kino's way so that she could use the power to throw the rock at the target. She gave it a good effort, hovering the rock in front of her face, then sending it speeding off faster than the eye could follow, until it hit the target with an audible thwap and fell to the ground.

Halen summoned the rock back into his hand and tossed it up and down. "Good aim, and good try, but you don't really have a sense of just how fast a bullet needs to move, do you?"

"No," Kino said. "I could try again."

"No need," Halen said. "In the future, we will actually practice that skill, but it would take a lot to overcome your intuition about how fast objects are 'supposed' to move. It's not worth trying now; it's not the point." He turned to Yan. "And Yan, if I were to hand you a gun, right this second, would you be able to hit a target dead center?"

"Probably not," she said. "I mean, with practice I could." She seemed happy to honestly answer direct questions, even if they came from Halen. That was good-- she was professional.

"Exactly," Halen said. "You have two tools, and you don't have the skill right now to use either of them to their full potential. So, right now, I'm going to teach you to cheat."

"Cheat?" Sid asked, having regained some of his enthusiasm.

"Aymon, if you would," Halen said.

Aymon stepped forward and pulled his gun out of its holster, easily accessible through his cassock pocket. "Imagine a line of power that goes from the tip of the gun to the target." As he spoke, he used the power to draw such a line in the air by pulling the air into a dense shape, making a hazy distorted looking path across the room. It was for illustration purposes only. "What you need to do is create a power structure that will keep the bullet following that line. It's easiest to make a tube that will nudge the bullet away from its edges. That way, even if your aim is off, your bullet will still end up where it needs to go. Look closely at where I'm aiming, off center, but I can fire and still hit."

He brought the power up then, feeling it thrum in his mind, making the real power structure, and also did a quick deadening of the air around the gun, to make the shot near silent. He pulled the trigger. With barely a 'pop', the bullet lept from the gun, the recoil familiar and easy to handle. It was over before he could even feel the twinges of his power structure adjusting the bullet's course, and it hit dead center in the target, leaving a nice neat hole.

"Exactly like that," Halen said. "You see how it works?"

"What's the power structure?" Yan asked. "Specifically."

"Whatever you're most comfortable with," Halen said. "I prefer turning the kinetic energy to heat, myself. But you can use whatever structure you like."

Yan nodded, accepting that explanation. 

"Ideally, you want to be able to use the same structure to stop a bullet dead, as a kind of shield," Halen said. He walked a bit away from the group. "It would be superhuman to keep up a power structure like that at all times, though I wish that you could, but if you know you're in a dangerous situation, you should surround yourself with that power structure. If your opponent isn't doing anything sneaky, it will do a great deal to protect you."

"Did you want to demonstrate that?" Aymon asked.

"I trust you won't actually try too hard to kill me," Halen said with a smile.

"Of course not." 

Yan's eyes narrowed as she listened to their mild banter, and Aymon wondered if he would need to explicitly tell his apprentices the nature of his relationship with Halen. It wasn't exactly their business, but they probably would need to know, at least enough to know to keep their mouths shut. "You ready?" Aymon asked.

"I'm always ready."

He smiled as he aimed the gun at Halen, who was holding his arms slightly out from his sides, palms forward and fingers splayed. He was an easy target, but Aymon had no worry that he would accidentally hurt him. He fired the gun again, still dampening the sound, but this time relying only on his own aim. The shot was true, but when the bullet was about a meter in front of Halen, it stopped dead and clattered to the floor, the tip faintly glowing. It was over faster than the eye or mind could process. Aymon holstered his gun.

His apprentices seemed focused on Halen and the bullet on the floor, no longer looking at Aymon.

"You want a power structure like that," Halen was saying, "because an individual bullet moves too fast for you to catch it with your attention..."

Aymon smiled at Halen, tapped his wrist to indicate the time. Halen smiled back, but didn't stop his monologue to the apprentices. Aymon slipped out the door, leaving the lesson to proceed without him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Jade for the beta read.


	6. All of Us Pirates Would Have Been Martyrs, Part One

Yan was exhausted by the time that Halen finally let the three apprentices go. If she hadn't been nurturing a quiet and confusing hatred of him inside her heart, it might have been a less trying time, not having to attempt to keep her face still, trying to obey orders that felt wrong only because they were coming from the wrong type of person. Halen clearly knew that Yan was struggling, though, to his credit, he didn't single her out for special annoyances when teaching the three of them to handle a gun. 

The most interesting part of the day had come when Halen had shown the three apprentices a kind of simulation room, a place that almost hummed with a sense of being full of the power. In it, Halen showed how the room could create a replica of anything that was programmed into it, including automatons of people. He indicated that he would make the three apprentices use it to practice fighting against moving targets.

At the end of the day, Halen took a good long look at the three of them, least moderately more well versed in the use of guns, and said, "Good. It's a start, at least."

None of them were the type to react well to that faint praise-- Yan because of who it was coming from, Kino because she seemed to hardly react to anything, and Sid because his pride prevented him from doing so. Halen seemed to understand this and laughed at them as he dismissed them. "We're done for the day. If you want dinner, there's a staff cafeteria two floors up and down the left hallway. Can't miss it."

The three apprentices stumbled out of the simulation room past him and he watched them go then left in the other direction. Yan felt his power moving through the air, though, following them as they left. It put a shiver down her spine and she tried to ignore it.

The cafeteria that Halen had directed them to was a clean and bright place, decently populated with uniformed Stonecourt staff of various types. The three apprentices didn't really blend in, but no one bothered them, and they all got dinner on trays at the long serving counter, then sat down. The cafeteria was furnished with stiff plastic, colorful and utilitarian, that made it look about two decades out of date. Yan practically crammed her burger into her mouth as soon as she sat down, having just realized how hungry she was. They hadn't had lunch, and time in the sub basement gyms had seemed as squishy as it often was aboard ships. There was no sense of how much of it had passed. 

"What did you think of that?" Yan asked, once she had eaten enough that she could think straight. She put down her burger and wiped off her hands so that she could try to sign for the benefit of Sid.

He rolled his eyes at her and signed, "No point in signing when she--" he jerked his head at Kino-- "is here."

"Just trying to be polite," Yan signed back. 

He grinned at her. "You're too nice for me."

"What are you saying?" Kino asked.

"You'll just have to learn sign," Sid said aloud, leaning back in his chair, propping his legs up on the seat next to Kino. "It's a superior language."

Yan tried to get the conversation back under control. "Do you two like Halen?"

"I will listen to what he has to say," Kino said, which was a measured response if Yan had ever heard one.

"He seems fine. Scary, though."

"He's trying to scare you to make you listen," Kino said. "He thinks you're too impulsive."

"Who, me?" Sid asked. Even if his expression screamed innocent, his general attitude was anything but. 

Kino took his question as one deserving of an actual response. "Yes, you. They noticed the way you were acting."

"And what way was I acting?" Sid was getting a kick out of attempting to rile up Kino in the same way that he had tried to push Sandreas and Halen's buttons. Yan couldn't tell if Kino was falling for it, or if she was playing her own game. She seemed calm.

"You were trying to figure out how much power they'll let you have when you talk to them," Kino said, even tone and placid expression, looking somewhere out over the top of Yan's head. "They won't let you have real power. That's why Halen had to show you that he could hurt you."

Sid wrinkled his nose. Some of the fun had gone out of the exchange, since Kino was being serious. "So?"

"You should be more careful," Kino said. "Be less obvious."

"But I like being obvious," Sid said. "I've never understood the point of being subtle."

"Kino's probably right," Yan said. "I'm not going to try to make them mad."

"You're taking her side?"

"I'm not-- it's not-- ugh." Yan gave up and shook her head. "At least let us get used to the apprenticeship before you start purposefully annoying our boss."

"He didn't seem that annoyed," Sid said. 

"Well, don't push your luck too hard. At least not until we learn more about what they're actually like."

"Why do you want to push them?" Kino asked.

Sid shrugged, seemingly unable or unwilling to answer the question.

"I guess I understand," Yan said. "It's good to know what the rules are. If you don't know right away, you have to experiment to find out..." She trailed off and ate some fries. "I guess I can just get ready to watch you get in trouble when you do something stupid."

Sid made a rude gesture.

"Hey, you'd better cut that out," Yan cautioned. "We need to have a professional image."

"Not until we're actually in charge. That will be when I can start worrying about being a professional."

"You think you'll be in charge?" Kino asked, appraising Sid. 

"You think you're going to be competition for me?" Sid leaned forward abruptly, and Yan shoved his shoulder back to stop him from getting ketchup on his cassock.

"It's not a competition," Yan said.

"Only one of us can be First," Kino said, then took a sip of her soda as though that wasn't something that Yan had been avoiding thinking about at all costs. She didn't want to know what happened to the two apprentices who did not succeed at becoming the next leader of the Empire. It seemed like a dangerous thing to think about.

"It's too early to say things like that," Yan said, trying to diffuse the tension that was between Kino and Sid, with Sid glaring hard at the calm Kino across the table.

"What would you be like as a leader?" Kino asked. 

This was a startling change of topic, which left Yan floundering for a second. "I don't know," she admitted. "I don't know the first thing about leadership. I guess that's what an apprenticeship is for. I... I just hope I can solve problems, keep the Empire running, not make people mad..." She smashed a fry between her fingers, then wiped them off on a napkin, troubled by Kino's question. She didn't know how to answer it, and she felt like that was a failure, that Kino was maybe looking for something specific.

"I think my first priority would be to increase colonization," Sid said. "Everybody likes more planets. And I'd get rid of pirates, just for you." He grinned at Yan.

When Sid mentioned colonization, Kino's face had a minute change, like there was some kind of visceral negative reaction that she was trying to stifle. Her hands were under the table, but her cassock sleeve was stretched in such a way that it was clear she was tugging on it hard, almost ripping it apart.

Yan remembered something that Kino had said earlier, something that had left her mind over the intense training session that Halen had put them through. "You were on Falmar, you said?"

"Yes." Kino didn't look at Yan.

"I'm sorry."

"I lived," Kino said.

"What was it like?" Sid asked.

Kino's gaze snapped to him, and he flinched back at the unexpected intensity of it. "Why do you want to know?"

He splayed his hands and shrugged. "Just curious."

"I was six. My mother took my father to the doctor in town, and neither of them ever came back. We had to go to Hanathue. Is that what you wanted?"

"I'm sorry," Sid said, with a seemingly genuine apologetic expression. 

"It's fine. I lived." Kino turned to Yan. "Your family's ship, were they there?"

Yan felt guilty when she answered, even though she had also only been six at the time. "No, we were doing mining runs. I don't think we would have even heard of what the Guild was doing until it was already over."

"Oh. I think it was the  _ Promise of Fortune _ that I was on."

Yan wracked her brain. "That's the Astreya family, right?"

Kino shrugged. "I don't remember."

"I'm glad that the Guild was able to help," Yan said. "You aren't mad at First Sandreas for that, are you?"

"Why would she be mad at Sandreas?" Sid asked.

"Because he was the one who ordered Falmar into quarantine. The Guild broke it when they took people out," Yan explained. "I guess not everybody knows that whole story."

"Only the Guild really talks about it," Kino said. "It was a long time ago."

Sid narrowed his eyes. "Are you mad, then?"

Kino didn't answer for a long second. "I'm glad that I was not responsible for condemning a planet to death."

Yan nodded. If the plague had spread along with the refugees off of Falmar, it could have killed the entire population of Hanathue, and a good chunk of the Guild along with it. The Guild had taken that risk, but Sandreas had made the opposite calculation. 

Yan shook her head. “It’s his job to make difficult decisions.”

Kino looked at Yan. “And when it’s your job?”

“You don’t have to be so intense,” Sid said. “We literally just started. Give us a chance to get used to the concept, at least.”

Kino didn’t say anything in response to that. Yan was torn between the two of them. On one hand, she agreed with Sid that she didn’t have the qualifications or information to have that kind of weight hanging over her head. On the other hand, though, Kino was right that this was going to be their job, and they should start thinking about the worst case scenarios as soon as they could. Then again, it’s easy to think something ahead of time, and change at the last minute. Yan put a halt to that train of thought before she gave herself a headache. Sid was right, she couldn’t think about that kind of responsibility now.

After a moment of awkward silence, Yan changed the topic. “Did you have a good summer?”

“It was fine,” Sid said. “My family’s annoying, though.”

“What about you, Kino?”

She shrugged. “I stayed at the Academy. I was a ward of the school until I came of age, so they let me stay over the summers.”

“Oh,” Yan said, unsure of how to respond. She felt like if she had known that Kino had nowhere to go, she would have invited her to the  _ Iron Dreams _ with Sylva. Of course, that was too late now, and she had barely known Kino at all before, probably not enough to make extending such an invitation a socially acceptable thing to do. Still, she felt bad that Kino had been at the Academy by herself. “That must have been kinda lonely.”

“It’s fine.” Kino shrugged. “There was one interesting thing that happened.”

“Oh?” Yan asked.

Kino pulled her phone out of her pocket, flicked through it for a second, and slid it across the table towards Yan and Sid. 

Her old text message history was displayed on the screen, these particular messages being to and from “1 st S”, which Yan assumed was Sandreas. The image at the top of the messages was hard to understand at first, but as Yan studied it, she recognized the top of one of the desks that came standard in Academy apartments, on top of which were several small… She couldn’t quite tell. They were round black things, with a shiny spot at the front, with a short wire sticking out behind. Each of them was about the size of Kino’s fingernail, and her hand was pinching one.

The message below the image said, “I request that you respect my privacy, please.”

And the reply from Sandreas read, “Acknowledged.”

“What are those?” Sid asked.

Kino slipped her phone back into her pocket. “Cameras.”

“They’re from…?” Yan asked, not quite wanting to say anything out loud in this crowded dining hall, aware suddenly that she was definitely being watched by someone.

“Yes. In my room.”

Sid frowned deeply, a troubling change from his usual jauntiness. He turned to Yan and signed, “In my house?”

“Maybe?” Yan shrugged helplessly.

“Why didn’t you tell us this before?” Sid demanded of Kino.

“I didn’t have your off planet contacts over the summer.”

“Why are you telling us now?”

“If I didn’t, I would be complicit.”

That answer didn’t seem to sit well with Sid for some reason. He clenched his fist. “And are those in our new place?”

“I don’t know,” Kino said.

“So what should we do about this?”

“I don’t care what you do.” And with that, Kino began gathering her belongings and standing, the conversation over, now that she had no more information to impart. Yan was grateful to Kino for the warning that she should be aware of being watched, but she, like Sid, had no idea what to do with that information. She would just keep an eye out, she supposed.

As the three apprentices left the cafeteria and navigated their way towards the staff entrance of Stonecourt, Yan realized that this conversation had provided her with more questions than answers. What did Sandreas hope to learn from spying on his students? How much information had he gathered on her, and what did he think about it? How had Kino found the cameras? Kino had said that she didn’t have Yan or Sid’s off planet contact information, but not that she didn’t have an ansible card-- an odd statement that had placed hooks in Yan’s brain. It was a whole box of unpleasant mysteries that had just been opened, and Yan took each thought, examined it, and then shut it away until she felt more prepared to think about it.

They made it outside of Stonecourt, into the thick late summer night air. It had rained while they had been indoors, but the sky was clear now, revealing the last dredges of sunlight on the horizon and the first flicker of stars above. The staff entrance of Stonecourt was a guarded gate in the wrought iron fence, and the three apprentices left together, starting out underneath the just-illuminated streetlamps.

“Yan!” a familiar voice called as they emerged. Across the street, standing up from where she had been sitting on a bench, Sylva was frantically waving at Yan. Kino stopped, though Sid plowed on, somewhat oblivious, until Kino caught his arm. He must not have been employing whatever mechanism he used to understand spoken speech at just that moment. Sylva crossed the street at a jog, hardly looking both ways and causing a car to come to a slightly affronted stop.

“I didn’t expect to see you here,” Yan said. “Why didn’t you text me?” 

“I figured I’d surprise you at the end of your first day of work,” Sylva said.

“You know Kino and Sid, right? This is Sylva Calor, my friend from the Academy.” Sylva was, of course, aware of Kino and Sid. Yan tried to put an inflection in her voice that cautioned Sylva not to be rude to the other two apprentices.

Kino nodded and Sid smiled. “We had Master Katrin’s sculpture class together,” Sid said. 

“Ha, I’d forgotten about that,” Sylva said. “Yeah.” She looked at Sid and Kino as though she wanted them to vanish. “Hey, you want to get dinner?”

Yan felt slightly helpless. “I just ate,” she said. “Sorry.” 

“Oh.” Sylva’s disappointment couldn’t have been clearer. “And you’re going with them?”

“We were just going back to our apartments,” Kino said. 

“Am I interrupting something?”

“No, no!” Yan said. She didn’t want Sylva to feel ignored. “I just didn’t know you were coming. I wouldn’t have eaten already if I had known.”

“It’s fine.”

This conversation was horribly awkward. Kino seemed unaware of the tension in the exchange, and was just staring absentmindedly up at the sky. Sid, though, had his eyes on Yan, looking at her as though he wanted something from her. Yan had no idea what that could be.

“Look, sorry for abandoning you guys,” Yan said to Kino and Sid. “But do you mind if I…?”

“You don’t want to help me find the cameras?” Sid signed to her. “I get it.”

Sylva narrowed her eyes. “What are you saying?”

“It’s nothing,” Yan said. “I’ll help you later, Sid. Or Kino can.”

“What?” Kino asked.

“She’s not as fun as you are,” Sid signed. He clearly enjoyed the fact that Sylva didn’t understand what he was saying, and that it made her frustrated. Yan didn’t like this. She hated feeling split between her oldest friend and her new coworkers.

“If you don’t want to hang out with me--” Sylva said.

“No, I do,” Yan tried, feeling pathetic. “I have to…”

Sid grinned at her. “Let’s go Kino. Yan apparently has more important things to do than hang out with us.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Yan said, but Sid was already traipsing off down the street, with Kino in tow. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she called after them, but neither of them turned back towards her.

Sylva had her hands on her hips. “You could be more assertive. Don’t let them push you around.”

“I am being assertive,” Yan said. “Are you mad at me?”

“No,” Sylva said, but that was the most obvious lie in the world.

“Do you want to get a coffee or something?”

“Sure. Fine,” Sylva said.

It was a stiff and awkward silence that descended upon them as they walked through the gathering dark of Yora streets, Sylva half a step ahead of Yan. There was none of Sylva’s usual lively conversation to distract Yan from her thoughts. So much had happened during the day, she was unable to focus on one thing, jumping from one instinct to the next with every footstep she took. In an effort to calm herself, Yan tried to clear her mind and time her breathing and steps, sinking into a quasi meditative state. Her power rose up around her, coming easily to the surface as it always had, and she spread it out in an ever expanding bubble around herself, passing through the air and the trees and the parked cars that lined the street.

Connecting with the universe in this way felt peaceful to Yan. She enjoyed the sense of losing herself, and finding the light of life in the people around her. There was the bright flare of Sylva, just a step ahead as she always was. All around, through the buildings and the street, there were strangers passing by unaware. Yan’s power passed over them and through them, out in a bubble until her concentration could stretch it no further, and then pulled back into herself. She repeated this exercise several times as she walked, like a stretch that cleared her mind of her personal concerns and replaced it with simple awareness.

She became aware, after several minutes and turns, that one of the presences she felt was following her, or at least going in the same direction for an improbably long time. This realization broke her concentration, and she lost the pleasant sense of being one with the universe. It was replaced with growing paranoia, and she kept glancing back over her shoulder, stumbling a little each time, as though her pursuer would be stupid enough to show themself. It was likely, of course, that whoever was following her had been sent by Sandreas, but that knowledge didn’t calm her anxiety any.

Sylva noticed Yan’s change in gait and stopped. “What’s the matter with you?” Sylva asked.

Yan shook her head, not wanting to worry her best friend. “Nothing, I’m just tired. A lot happened today.”

Even as she and Sylva found a cafe to sit down in, and they both had a coffee (and a sandwich for Sylva), Yan couldn’t shake the sense of wrongness, and it carried through into her conversation, spoiling it and making Sylva annoyed with her. It felt even worse when they had to part, with Sylva walking off towards her own apartment in a different part of the city, leaving Yan on her own to return to her new place. 

They had never lived apart from each other since meeting, so it felt new and terrible for Yan to say goodbye and watch Sylva go. It was like negotiating a whole new relationship between them, to which there were rules that Yan didn’t understand and didn’t know how to learn.

* * *

The next morning, Yan woke up long before her alarm, perhaps because she was unused to the empty silence and size of her new apartment. It was a nice place, well furnished and very secure, with a secret room hidden in her closet that she presumed was for use in emergencies or for keeping important documents safe.

She knew she wasn’t going to be able to fall back asleep, so, rather than staring blankly at the ceiling and wasting her time, Yan decided that she should do something useful. Her first thought was to find the cameras that were probably hidden somewhere in her apartment, but after scouring the place top to bottom, she found no evidence of them. This forced her to conclude that either the Imperial security who had bugged her apartment were better at hiding things than she was at finding them, or that Sandreas had had his fill of spying on his apprentices. The first seemed markedly more likely, which was an uncomfortable thought.

By time she had finished pulling apart every nook and cranny of her apartment, Yan had worked herself up into a real hunger, and the sun was finally coming up over the horizon, peeking past the buildings of Yora and into her large living room window. She didn’t have food in the fridge (she hadn’t yet had a chance to go grocery shopping after moving in) so she resigned herself to leaving and finding breakfast at a coffee shop. She would have time to loiter and still make it to Stonecourt on time for another round of “training” or whatever she was about to face today.

The morning was chilly and damp, the first smells of autumn in the air. Still, it was invigorating, and Yan’s worries about Sylva and her awkwardness from the night before fled her mind as she tramped along the sidewalk. 

She muttered a morning prayer under her breath. “Oh God who splits the night from the day…” Out of prayerful habit more than anything, she sent her power out around herself once again, feeling the different tang of the morning air sing in her awareness. There were fewer people out at this time of day than there had been the night before, which only made the follower she had more obvious.

She wasn’t surprised that someone was on her tail, but she was moderately annoyed and wondered if there was anything she could do about it. The walk had invigorated her, and she felt like she had absorbed some of Sid’s willingness to push back against her new boss, as well as some of Kino’s clear paranoia.

Yan came to the coffee shop she had been aiming for, and she stepped inside, jingling the bell over the door. It was still a little early for the morning breakfast rush, so there were only a few people in the store. The employee manning the counter looked up as she came in, taking note of Yan’s uniform cassock. People dressed in her uniform weren’t exactly a rare sight around Yora, but they weren’t exactly common, either, especially the further one got from the Academy itself. Before she went up to the counter, Yan took a glance out the store window and cast her power out, hoping to catch a glimpse of her pursuer. No such luck, as the person was behind a brick wall from her, in the alley next to the building, probably with some kind of eyes on the entrance to watch Yan as she came out. Subtle, but annoying.

Yan ordered a coffee and bagel, then sat down at a table near the window, nibbling her breakfast and thinking. She wondered if her follower knew that Yan knew they were there. On one hand, Yan had been casting her power out, which she figured a sensitive would feel. But, on the other hand, her follower might not be a sensitive, and Yan had been pretty fastidious about not looking over her shoulder like she was being followed. She had tried to act normally.

If, she thought, her watcher didn’t know that Yan was purposefully trying to escape, she might be able to get away. Well, it was worth a try, anyway.

Yan finished her bagel, then went back up to the counter. “Do you have a bathroom?” she asked. “And, uh, sorry if this is weird, but can I have a bag?”

The woman gave her a long look, then handed her a paper bag for takeout orders and directed her to the back of the shop, where there was a single stall bathroom. Yan wasted no time in pulling off her cassock and cape, leaving her dressed in a crisp white button down and black slacks. Still pretty visible, but certainly less than the cassock. She folded her discarded clothes neatly and jammed them inside the bag. She considered if there was anything else she could do to change her appearance, but, looking in the rather dingy mirror, she decided that there wasn’t. It wasn’t as though she had enough hair to change the style of it, nor did she have makeup or glasses to put on or off. 

Yan sent out another pulse of power. Her tail was still waiting in the same spot outside the restaurant. Excellent. She pushed open the bathroom door quietly, then looked both ways to see if any of the employees of this place were observing her. They weren’t.

Further back in the cafe, past the bathroom, was the kitchen, partially obscured by flapping plastic strips dangling from the doorframe, and humming with the sound of an industrial fan. Yan took a steadying deep breath, then pushed her way through the plastic flaps, into the humid kitchen area. She was in luck; the back exit was propped open with a chair, with the fan vainly trying to cycle cool outside air into the hot kitchen. 

No one paid her any mind as she walked as confidently as she could through the kitchen, then out the back door, ending up in the alley opposite from where her tail was waiting. She hustled through the alley, resisting the urge to break into a run. There was no need to call attention to herself.

It felt liberating to have freed herself from her spy, but constantly checking if they had returned put her into even more of a paranoid mood. She worried that, since they may have been set on her for her own protection, she might be in some kind of danger. She also worried that someone would be mad at her for the trick she was playing. But then again, she had been alone in Yora so many times and nothing bad had ever happened to her. Besides, this trick would never work again, she was sure, so she might as well try to enjoy it while she could.

Yan made a long looping circle, going in the wrong direction for several blocks, then turning towards Stonecourt, but walking around it in a wide radius in order to approach it from the “wrong” direction. By the time she eventually made it to the staff entrance in the back, she was worn out from her several kilometers of brisk walking. It was lucky that she had taken her cassock off, since she would have been very sweaty had she kept it on.

When she made it through the security checkpoint, though, Yan realized that the jig was up. Halen was waiting for her in the staff entrance lobby, leaning against the wall with a smile. Even though he was dressed only in a dark suit, Stonecourt staff recognized him and gave him a wide berth. Yan tried to avoid him, too. As soon as she saw him, she tried to duck away down a different hallway, but Halen followed her.

“Ms. BarCarran,” he said as he came up behind her. He was clearly amused. “I would be very grateful if you would accompany me.”

“What do you want?” Yan asked, turning to face him. She would have crossed her arms, but she had her bag of cassock tucked underneath her armpit.

“I think it would be nice to get better acquainted with Aymon’s apprentices, since we’re going to be working so closely together.”

Yan didn’t see a way out, so she said, “Fine.”

Halen smiled widely and put his heavy hand on her shoulder, steering her down the hallway. After a while, they left the interior of Stonecourt, and Halen led her into the courtyard that she had glimpsed outside of Sandreas’s office window the day before. It was a cleverly designed place, with trees and hedges positioned in a quasi maze, restricting sightlines. With the cheerful morning twittering of birds and the burble of distant fountains, the place seemed much larger than it was in actuality.

Halen sat down on a stone bench with a tree at his back. He took up a shocking amount of bench space, and he gestured for Yan to take a seat next to him, which she reluctantly did. He folded his hands across his lap, and Yan noticed for the first time that he was wearing a plain gold band on his ring finger. Halen didn’t say anything for a long minute and just stared up through the leaves of the tree.

Finally, just as the silence was growing unbearable for Yan, he spoke. “Did you enjoy your walk this morning?”

Yan wished immediately that he had not spoken. “It was fine,” she muttered.

“There are easier routes to take to Stonecourt, you know. The reason you’re in the apartment you are is because it’s a straight line, less than a kilo.”

“I wanted to get a coffee,” Yan said.

“I see. And then you wanted to walk all the way down to Terlin street, which is about a kilo and a half out of the way.”

Yan let out a frustrated huff of breath. “Stop watching where I go.”

“It’s for your own safety,” Halen said. “Your escort called me in a panic, you know.”

“That’s not my problem.” She was being a little too rude. She should tone it down. “Sorry.”

Halen laughed. “You don’t have to apologize. I’ll admit I’m a little impressed that you got away.”

“You still knew where I was.”

“My friend, if you want to avoid being tracked, you might want to leave your phone at home.”

“We’re not friends,” Yan said, but that was more to cover up the stupid feeling of that blatant oversight.

“It will be a long five years if we aren’t.” He sounded somewhat melancholy about this. “I’m certainly willing to be, you know.”

“I find it hard to believe that I could be friends with a pirate,” Yan said.

“I haven’t been a pirate for more than twenty years,” Halen said. “It would be very difficult for me to claim to be one now.”

“It’s in your blood,” Yan said. “Literally, I mean.”

Halen chuckled. “You can hardly hold what my parents did to me in the womb against me, can you? It’s hardly their fault for wanting a strong child.”

“I thought that only natural children could have the power,” Yan said.

“Clearly, that is not the case. But you wouldn’t hear about pirates with the power, would you? And genetic modification is illegal, for the most part, so you don’t hear about that, either…” He shrugged.

“Are there other pirates with the power?”

“Almost certainly. You know how there’s a higher than average incidence of spacers with the power; I’m sure pirates do the same.”

Yan felt the tips of her ears heat up in half-embarrassment at that. “Yeah.”

Halen looked at her and raised an eyebrow. “You know something about that?”

“My uncle paid for my mother to… you know.” Yan said. “Buy genetic material. For me.”

Halen laughed. “So, we have something else in common then. Test tube babies, the both of us.”

“I’m natural,” Yan said. “Not-- they didn’t mess with my genes.”

“Natural adjacent, maybe,” Halen said. “There’s no shame in it.”

“I suppose,” Yan said.

“Any idea who your father is?”

“Someone with the power, I’d assume,” Yan said. “Which narrows it down a lot. But other than that, no, I don’t know, and I don’t want to find out.”

Halen nodded. “Probably a good choice.”

“It doesn’t really matter,” Yan said, scuffing the ground with her heel.

“You’re right. You have your family.” Halen was silent for a long second. “Mind if I ask what your family is like?”

“Why?”

“I’m curious about Aymon’s apprentices. And I’m curious about you the most because we have some things in common.”

“We don’t,” Yan insisted. “Being a spacer is nothing like being a pirate.”

“Tell me about it, then.”

Yan scowled. “I don’t know. What is there to know? I lived on the  _ Iron Dreams _ , my mother raised me until she died, then my uncle and his wife took me in. Then I went to the Academy. I know how to fly shuttles and dogfighters; I know how to work in the greenhouse; I can do repairs, spacewalks…; I got to jump the ship this summer.” She couldn’t help the twinge of pride that entered her voice at that. The fact that her cousin and captain had entrusted her with the responsibility to use the precious and dangerous stardrive, to jump the entire ship and crew across space, that had been a real joy.

“Good job,” Halen said. “It’s too bad you have the power.”

“What?”

“If my captain had let any of my cousins fly the ship at your age, they probably would have been on track to be captain,” Halen said.

“Oh.”

“Did you ever think about that?”

“Sometimes,” Yan said. “I mean, if I was frustrated at the Academy, I’d think about leaving every once in a while. Daydreams, mostly.”

Halen nodded. “Would you have wanted to be captain?”

Yan stared out across the courtyard, watching some birds dive over the rows of hedges. “Probably,” she said. “But it doesn’t matter now.”

“I figured I might have been captain of my ship, one day,” Halen said.

“What ship were you on?”

“It was called the  _ Bluebeetle _ .”

“Was?”

“It was destroyed, years ago. Before I came to work for Aymon.”

“I’m sorry,” Yan said, the words slipping out before she could stop them. She really was sorry; she couldn’t imagine what it would be like to think of the  _ Iron Dreams _ being destroyed. It was too much to imagine.

“As am I,” Halen said. “I miss it, even today.”

“What happened to it?”

“It was hunted down, by the Fleet.”

“Really?” The Fleet rarely bothered hunting pirate ships, and this was a major point of contention with the Guild, who considered that was the Fleet not doing their due diligence to protect free trade within the Empire.

“Well, we were manufacturing stardrives,” Halen said, very blase. “That could hardly be allowed to continue.”

The world narrowed to a point in Yan’s vision, that same panic she had first felt when Halen appeared in the restaurant rising up in her chest again. “ _ You _ were making stardrives?”

Halen laughed at her obvious discomfort. “That’s another reason why you don’t hear about many pirates who are sensitives. Most of them get themselves killed trying to do exactly that. But yes, I was making stardrives.”

“How?”

“I’m not going to describe the process to you,” Halen said. He studied her for a second. “You might be able to do it. But I wouldn’t want you to try.”

“I wouldn’t,” Yan said. “I promise I won’t. Don’t tell me how.”

He shook his head. “I don’t expect you to ever need to. You could figure it out if you looked.”

Yan shook her head. “If I was able to do it, the stardrive makers would have offered me an apprenticeship.”

Halen’s lips quirked up a little. “Perhaps,” he said.

“How did you survive, if your ship was destroyed?” Yan asked, trying to deflect away from herself.

Halen sighed. “It’s a long story. I might tell you all of it someday. But the short version is that I was on a shuttle, far away. I was actually making a stardrive at the time. My family would drop me off in the middle of nowhere, so that I couldn’t destroy the ship if I messed up, and they’d come and get me a week or so later. When they didn’t show up…” He shrugged.

“Were you near a station or something?”

Halen’s mouth pressed into a thin line. “No,” he said. “I really was in the middle of nowhere. And I ran out of food.”

Yan tilted her head, curious. Shuttles weren’t capable of interstellar travel, so, to have survived, Halen must have been found, if not by his own ship, then by someone else. “Was there someone else looking for you?”

“Eventually, yes. But not then. The Fleet thought that their stardrive maker had been destroyed when they destroyed the  _ Bluebeetle _ , I believe.”

“Then how…” Yan trailed off.

“I had been making a stardrive at the time,” Halen said, voice somewhat wistful. “I was able to get it to jump.”

Again, Yan tried to stifle the immediate fear reaction that she felt in her gut. She couldn’t really picture it, herself, alone in the middle of space, just on a shuttle with a stardrive. Shuttles weren’t capable of doing the computing that jumping a ship required. Shuttles weren’t physically designed to jump like ships were. Stardrives… Yan had no idea how one could make a stardrive work without the intricate interplay of computer and ship and navigator that jumps usually required. It terrified her, to have Halen discuss this-- what seemed like a miracle outside of her comprehension-- so casually. She tried not to let it show on her face or in her voice. “That’s very impressive.”

“What are you afraid of?” Halen asked suddenly.

The fear twisted in her gut. “I’m not,” she lied.

He looked at her. “You’re not a good liar.”

“How would you know?”

“I can’t give away all my secrets yet, Yan,” Halen said with a slight smile. “You could ask Aymon.”

Yan frowned. “How much have you been spying on me?”

“Some,” Halen said. “The watcher was for your own protection.”

“I’m capable of protecting myself.”

“I’d say I’ll believe that when I see it, but I think that you’d be compelled to demonstrate. I don’t really advise you trying to get away from your escort again.”

“I don’t like not seeing who’s watching me.”

“You’ll meet her soon enough,” Halen said. “I figured I should give you a chance to get settled before introducing new people into your life. How did you realize you were being followed, by the way?”

“I like to meditate,” Yan said. “I was just casting my power out randomly, and noticed that the same person was behind me for too long.” 

He laughed. “Effective, if lucky,” he said. “How’s your range?”

“Bigger in space,” Yan said.

His mouth turned up in a smile. “Isn’t it always?”

“I’m not going to tell you what my range is, so you can have my follower stay just outside it.”

“I would never do such a thing,” Halen said, but he was obviously joking. “You can have your secrets, too, Yan. I’m sure we’ll both find out a lot about each other soon enough.”

“Maybe.”

Halen stood from the bench and stretched, his huge form blocking out the sun, and the ring glinting on his finger. “We should head back inside. It’s about time to get started with your training.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Jade for the beta read.


	7. The City on the Hill

The first few weeks of Yan’s apprenticeship flew by. Halen was indefatigable when it came to teaching the three apprentices, and so their actual days of training were so long and exhausting that, when they were over, Yan could do little more than eat dinner, then fall asleep as soon as she got back to her apartment. She usually made it all the way to her bed, and she was usually able to take off her uniform cassock and cape, but there were days when she sat down on the couch after coming in the door, and woke up five or six hours later, with a horrible kink in her neck and absolutely zero memory of falling asleep.

She felt pretty bad about this, because Sylva often texted her at night, asking how her day had been, and Yan only ever got back to her in the morning, reading her messages back over the bowl of dry cereal she ate piece by piece with her fingers. Some of Sylva’s messages had an air of desperation to them that Yan felt bad about. While Yan spent nearly all of her time with Kino and Sid, though she wasn’t sure she could call them friends, they were at least peers. Sylva was adjusting to life in the IKRB offices where she and her mentor-- a strange woman, to hear Sylva tell it-- were the only power users in sight. Sylva was new, the youngest in the office, and the odd one out in every respect, so Yan couldn’t blame her for feeling lonely and trying to reach out, asking if they could meet up for dinner, or hang out on the tenday, or anything like that. Yan felt bad for the fact that she couldn’t get away from work, and when she was away from work, she was asleep.

She texted Sylva platitudes that sounded false even to her.

> hopefully things will calm down soon

> s. is going to introduce us as his apprentices at the governors’ dinner

> so after that we’ll probably be doing more routine things than crash course on how to use the power to defend ourselves

> and trust me i will be glad to be free of it

> my brain has felt like it’s been stomped into mush every night

> and i want to hang out with you again

< you allowed to bring a +1 to the governors’ dinner thing?

> didn’t think you liked parties

> no one’s mentioned it, so i don’t think so

> sorry :(

< it’s ok

< idek what I’d wear

The day of the Governor’s Dinner, all three of the apprentices had been let out of training before noon, giving them some blessed time off, though Yan suspected that this was mostly so that Halen could have the afternoon to do whatever his mysterious normal tasks were. She didn’t care enough to ask what he was doing with his time, and she was grateful just to have the opportunity to take a nap and a long, luxurious bath before what was certain to be a busy night.

She couldn’t quite relax as much as she wanted, and by the time that the evening rolled around, she was nervous, especially when she got dressed in the outfit that had been given to her for the occasion.

It was clear that Sandreas wanted his apprentices to make a suitable impression on the assembled leadership of all the planets in the Empire. Yan looked at herself in the floor length mirror in her bedroom, admiration not quite what she was feeling.

The cassock and cape she had been given were beautiful, both made of heavy fabric that moved with a life of its own when she turned. The cassock was black, with small red buttons that matched the long cape. All along the bottom of the cape was almost invisible embroidery, done in red thread that only caught the light when it splayed out behind her, with the text of a hymn interwoven with floral patterns. She had been given a slim gold circlet to wear on her head: heavy, real gold. 

Her family would have been impressed with it, even if her uncle Maxes would have teased her about how much it had cost. The spacer in her brain, no matter that Halen had claimed she wasn’t one anymore, couldn’t put away the knowledge of how much a kilo of gold was worth to ship.

Still, she hated to think that Halen might have been-- probably was-- right. The cost of the metal, while it registered as a fact in her brain, meant less than this new feeling of  _ image  _ that she was suddenly aware of. Sandreas was trying to communicate something with the way that he was presenting her. Yan shifted in the mirror, tilting her chin up, straightening her shoulders, twisting her lips into a gracious but controlled smile. It was her responsibility to try to embody that message, to not disappoint Sandreas. He was trusting her with that responsibility.

Fully dressed now, Yan left her apartment and crossed the hall to Kino’s rooms, intending to gather up her fellow apprentices so that they could meet the limo outside. She figured it was easier to collect Kino first, since Sid would almost certainly object to including Kino in anything. Yan knocked on the door.

There was a muffled sound of something heavy tumbling to the floor, a solid thud, as though Kino had just knocked something over. It took a moment for Kino to appear at the door, and she seemed disheveled. Her hair was wet and she was not dressed, wrapped instead in a towel. Yan looked in behind her at her apartment: though it was dark inside, it was clearly messy, with the furniture all pushed to the side of the living room, and random garbage tossed haphazardly across the floor. 

“Are you going to get dressed?” Yan asked. “We’re going to be late.”

“Yes,” Kino said. Although her tone was even, the way that she was stretching the edge of her towel with a clawlike grip indicated that she was nervous. 

“You okay?” Yan asked.

“Yes,” Kino said again. She wasn’t meeting Yan’s eyes, but she held open the door in a clear invitation for Yan to come into the apartment. Yan did, stepping gingerly over a discarded pizza box on the floor. The door shut behind her, and Kino walked deeper into the apartment. Although Yan could feel the power move through the air as Kino simply scooted garbage out of her path as she walked, the sensation was slippery and odd, quieter than Yan was used to. If she hadn’t seen the trash moving, Yan might not have noticed the feeling at all, which was unusual for her.

Kino’s outfit for the party, perhaps the only clean thing in the apartment, was laid out on the couch. Without preamble, she dropped her towel and started to get dressed. Yan hastily turned the other direction.

“Do I have to wear this?” Kino asked.

“The outfit?”

“This.” Yan was forced to glance at the nude Kino to see her holding up her own gold circlet with two fingers.

“I’d assume so,” Yan said, turning around and reaching up to touch her own circlet. “Why? Do you not like it?”

Kino quoted the theology, saying, “‘The Red King’s crown broke the strength of those who wore it, unfit to bear its weight.’”

Yan shook her head. “It’s not like you’re claiming something above your station. Sandreas gave it to you for a reason.”

“My station?” Kino asked. Her voice was muffled by her pulling her cassock on over her head. 

Yan had no answer to that one, but turned back around to see Kino fully dressed, except for her shoes. Yan walked over to her, picked up Kino’s golden circlet from where it had been discarded on the couch, and placed it gently on her head. Kino stared at Yan for a second, then shook her head and began braiding her hair, pulling the water out of it with the power as she went so that it was fluffy and dry beneath her fingertips.

“It looks good on you,” Yan said.

Kino didn’t smile.

* * *

The three apprentices arrived at Stonecourt together, all looking more respectable than they ever had in their lives, in their new cassocks and capes. Sid spent the limo ride fiddling with this own circlet, which was apparently too cold to bear on his bald head, until Yan told him to make it float just above his skin. He grinned at her, and did that very ostentatiously, until Yan used her power to force it back down just before they all exited the limo. He made a rude sign at her, but the metal band stayed in its normal position, instead of hovering a good fifteen centimeters above his head.

Good. All three of them were capable of behaving. All three of them could look the way that Sandreas needed them to look.

Inside Stonecourt, they were greeted by Halen, who took a long look at them, in a way that made Yan want to squirm away. He was dressed in his normal black suit, though perhaps a slightly nicer variation than whatever his daily wear version was.

“Good,” Halen said after a second of scrutiny. “I trust I don’t have to remind you all how to smile and behave?”

“No,” Yan said, though glancing at Kino, perhaps she could have been reminded how to smile, and looking to her other side at Sid, perhaps he could have used a reminder to behave, grinning as he was.

“Good,” Halen said again. “Aymon is meeting with Guildmaster Vaneik. He asked me to bring you to him when you arrived.”

“Why?” Sid asked, and Yan was glad that he had asked it, because she wanted to know the answer.

“I believe because Vaneik wants you to meet his apprentices.” There was something in Halen’s tone that Yan couldn’t quite understand, but she chalked it up to him disliking spacers, on principle, as a pirate. He led the three apprentices up towards Sandreas’s office, and knocked once on the door before simply opening it.

Sandreas was sitting by himself on one of the couches, and Ungarti Vaneik was seated across from him, surrounded on either side by his two apprentices, Nomar Thule and Yuuni Olms. Yan recognized the apprentices, vaguely, from following spacer news and from having seen them both at the Academy years earlier. Everyone in the room looked distinctly uncomfortable. Sandreas’ smile was thin when he looked over at Halen and his own apprentices.

“Ah, so glad you could make it before we all headed down to the dinner,” Sandreas said. “Ungarti, these are my new apprentices: Yan BarCarran, Sid Welslak, and Kino Mejia.” 

Yan made an attempt to smile.

Guildmaster Vaneik was a tall man, as all spacers were, and he had long black hair worn loose around his face. He looked them over, and his dark eyes settled on Yan, taking in her tall frame. “Aymon, I always enjoy being in a room where the spacers outnumber the rest of you two to one. You’re from the _ Iron Dreams _ , aren’t you? Pellon BarCarran’s ship?” He had recognized her last name.

“Yes, sir,” Yan said.

“Good man, Pellon,” Vaneik said. “Give him my regards when you see him.”

“I will, sir,” Yan said.

“Let me introduce you to my apprentices: this is Yuuni Olms, from the  _ Neutron Star _ , and Nomar Thule, from the  _ Gallant _ .”

Olms had a slender face, with curly brown hair cut close to her head, and inquisitive green eyes. Thule was broad where Olms was slim, and his blond hair was slicked back from his forehead. The thin line of his mouth, the harshness of his jaw, and the squint of his eyes gave a serious impression, one that Yan didn’t particularly like. 

All the apprentices exchanged polite greetings.

“So, which one of these three is going to succeed you, Aymon?” Vaneik asked. “You’ll forgive me for hoping it’s the spacer.” Sid poked Yan in the side, at that.

Yan felt distinctly uncomfortable. Sandreas glanced over at her, amused. “I should ask you the same question, since you’ve had your two for almost five years now. You’ve had more time to figure out which is a suitable replacement for you than I have.”

“I’m in no danger of retiring, trust me.”

Thule’s mouth twitched downwards in a stifled scowl, and Olms looked away, out the darkened window behind Sandreas’s desk.

“Of course, you’re still under the impression that you’ll name your son as your successor.”

“I wasn’t aware that you had rewritten the Guild’s charter to turn it into a monarchy, Aymon,” Ungarti said lightly. “Even the person I name must be confirmed by the Council.”

“Luckily, the Council seems to respect your choices,” Sandreas said, his voice dry.

“Most of the time,” Vaneik said dismissively, wanting to change topics. “I still wanted to get your clarification on this Olar issue.”

“I don’t see why I should have to do anything about it,” Sandreas said. “If I start stepping on governors’ toes, I’m going to have larger issues.”

“It’s hardly just my problem,” Vaneik said. “And it’s hardly just an issue with Olar. It’s a problem across the board.”

“What are you suggesting that I do, then?” 

“Put a Fleet ship in the system. Or more than one. Then you don’t have to step on any toes.”

“Oh, you don’t think it’s toe-stepping to park a warship in orbit around one of my planets?” Sandreas asked. “You don’t think that makes governors sweaty under their collars?”

“And how do you think it makes me feel when my ships can hardly get close to a system because your governors are letting pirates just sit where they please? I’m asking you very nicely to do something about it, because if I start stepping on your governors’ toes, you are going to feel that, too.”

Sandreas pursed his lips. “I’ll make some polite but firm suggestions,” Sandreas said. “But even if I had the inclination to send Fleet ships into every system, I don’t have the ships to spare. So don’t expect me to do so.”

“They’re all so busy fighting your little war.”

“That is, in fact, their purpose, among other things,” Sandreas said. “Chasing pirates and enforcing planetary law is generally beneath them.”

Vaneik frowned. “If you make an example out of Olar, then you won’t have to deal with this problem everywhere else. You’ve given people too long of a leash.”

“I don’t tell you how to run the Guild,” Sandreas said. “So let’s not talk about what leeway I give people.”

“As you say.”

Sandreas stood, which made Vaneik, and his two apprentices stand as well. “I’ll think about it, Ungarti. But don’t expect miracles,” Sandreas said, his tone moderated, more of a concession. 

“I will take what I can get.”

Sandreas nodded. “You should go down to dinner.” 

* * *

The Governors’ Dinner was being held in Stonecourt’s largest event hall. Yan had stuck her head in once before, when Halen had briefly described the event to them, but then the marble floor had been empty and the lights had been dimmed, giving the room the appearance of an abandoned department store rather than a party. Now, however, the room was elaborately decorated, with tables festooned with flowers, light seeming to come from absolutely everywhere. It was crowded, too, with the entourages of the governors of the several hundred planets within the Empire.

All the guests were doing their best to signal their standing. There were those, like Yan, who were dressed in their cassocks, announcing themselves as sensitives. When Yan cast out her power over the room, she could feel that extra soft tingle of power on many of the guests, even some who were not wearing cassocks and capes. There were plenty of governors, many of whom were sensitives, who were instead wearing their local finery, whatever that was: splendid dresses and robes, the likes of which Yan had only ever seen in photographs. Although Yan had travelled extensively as a child on board her family’s ship, she had only ever encountered the less formal variations of some of this traditional wear. And there were plenty of more subdued outfits, as well: people dressed in simple, more universal clothing, suits and dresses that might have been at home at any high society gathering throughout the Empire.

The three apprentices hardly stood out, compared to the gaudy sea of people, which meant that no one looked at them as they were led to the back of the room by some of the Stonecourt staff, Sandreas having briefly left to change into his own outfit, which he had not been wearing when he spoke to Guildmaster Vaneik. Yan wondered if that had been an intentional snub, or if Sandreas’ day was just so carefully regimented that he couldn’t have spared a moment to change before then.

In any event, waiting in the back area of the room, behind the stage, Yan couldn’t help but feel a little nervous. Without Sandreas, the three apprentices were unmoored. Kino leaned against the back wall, picking at the sleeve of her cassock with her fingernails. Sid kept peeking out the open stage door, a repeated action that made Yan more anxious than anything else.

“What are you looking for?” she signed at him.

“Nothing,” he replied. But he stuck his head out again just the same. 

Sandreas finally arrived, with Halen in tow, just a minute before the event was officially scheduled to begin. His outfit was quite different from his usual, and Yan was struck again that Sandreas loved to make an impression. His normally black cassock had been swapped out for a red one, and his long red cape had been replaced with black. The gold band on his head was only a hair more elaborate than the apprentices’, being made of a gold braid instead of a solid band. It sat neatly over his greying temples. He spoke with the master of ceremonies for a moment before speaking with Yan, Sid, and Kino.

“Kino, I’d appreciate it if you could smile,” Sandreas said. “That’s all you have to do here.” He glanced at Sid. “And you, try to behave.”

“You aren’t going to tell Yan to play nice?” Sid asked.

“No,” Sandreas said, which made Sid make a face. Yan looked down at her feet. “Yan has a healthy sense of shame and personal decency, which I have seen that you lack.” Sandreas’ voice was light, and his expression was amused. Sid rolled his eyes and shook his head. 

The master of ceremonies got Sandreas’ attention. On stage, a small band began to play a patriotic song, silencing the sound of many overlapping conversations that had been drifting in from the hall itself. As the first song came to a close, Sandreas walked out from the backstage area, into the full bright lights, standing behind a lectern to give his welcome address.

Yan listened to him, watching him from the side, waiting for the signal that the three apprentices should step out. Sandreas looked confident and serene, and his voice was even. He didn’t glance down at the notes for the address he was giving, but Yan could feel him using the power. She couldn’t tell exactly what he was doing, but it was almost certainly some simple trick to see the page without looking, perhaps by sensing the places where the ink lay on the paper. It was the kind of thing that Yan could do when focused on it completely (in fact, she used to do it when she lived in the Academy’s communal dorms and wanted to read without bothering her peers by turning on the lights), but she was impressed by the way that he was able to use the power with that level of control and focus, while calmly giving a speech to almost all the assembled leaders of the Empire. She had known, intellectually, that Sandreas was powerful in a personal sense, or at least she had assumed it, but she hadn’t quite internalized it until this moment, seeing him so completely in his element, all the room focused on him and under his sway, hanging onto every word he spoke.

“The future of the Empire is one where we are united, against all who would seek to divide us,” Sandreas said. “We have more enemies than we have friends in this universe, uncountable and unnumbered as the stars. If we allow petty troubles to divide our friends from us, we shall be weaker still. It is standing together that has allowed us to prevail against all who would do us harm, as it has been since the founding of our Empire. 

“While our enemies hide in the darkness, we shine with the light of God. It is that shining light that we pass down to our children. We must not allow ourselves to extinguish that torch; we must carry it forward.

“I have served as the Voice of this Empire for twenty years,” Sandreas said. “I have been blessed to lead you, as First Herrault was blessed before me. It has been the greatest honor and the greatest burden that any man could bear, and I have been blessed that I have not had to bear it completely alone; the Emperor, the Imperial Council, and all you assembled here have shared in the sacred duty of leading our people through every moment of light and every moment of darkness for these past twenty years.

“There must, however, come a time when I will pass the torch on to the one who will come after me, continuing the unbroken line of Voices. I pray that this will not be for many more years, but I must be prepared for that day nonetheless. As is traditional, I have chosen three apprentices, one of whom, with the assent of the Emperor, will eventually succeed me. 

“Although I have never considered myself a teacher, it is a joyous burden to impart all the wisdom I have learned to these three. I will give them all my hope and my fear. They will learn from all that I have done, and all that I have failed to do. I pray that where they find fault in me, they will use that as a guide to be fair leaders of men where I may have failed.

“First Herrault provided such a shining example to me. There is a powerful bond between teacher and student, one which transcends time. I hear First Herraut’s voice when I speak. I still yearn to live up to her example, and fear that perhaps I am but a passing shadow, an imitation of her true wisdom. But she confessed to feeling the same about First Wyland before her. My apprentices may someday come to feel the same way about me.

“It is this passing of the torch that gives us strength, that ensures continuity of governance and of tradition, that unites the past with the future. My apprentices will have much to learn, but I am confident that they will learn it, and, with humility, I pray that I am fit to teach it.

“I would now like to introduce to you my three apprentices, who will carry the torch of the future.

“Yan BarCarran, of the Guild ship the  _ Iron Dreams _ .”

Yan had been so wrapped up in listening to Sandreas that it took her a half second to realize that she was being summoned. She jerked to attention, then stepped out into the bright lights of the stage, looking out across the assembled leadership of the Empire, feeling the eyes of the universe upon her. She smiled, though her heart beat in her throat. There was applause, though Yan couldn’t tell if its tenor was enthusiastic.

“Kino Mejia, of Hanathue,” Sandreas said.

Kino stepped out into the light behind Yan. She wasn’t smiling. “Falmar,” Kino said, though Yan doubted that anyone could hear her over the clapping. “I’m from Falmar.”

“And Sid Welslak, of Galena.”

Sid grinned and waved as he stepped out next to the other two.

Sandreas turned and looked at the three of them for a moment, the smile on his face warm, though Yan couldn’t be sure if it was genuine, or if he was just good at acting for the cameras. It may very well have been both.

“I present to you the future of the Empire!”

* * *

After the speeches had been given, the formal dinner itself was a bit of a blur for Yan. She, Sid, and Kino sat with Sandreas at the head table, along with the governor of Emerri, a woman named Runwest. Halen was nowhere to be seen, though Yan chided herself for feeling like that was odd; it wasn’t as though Halen was a high status individual, so there was no reason for him to sit at Sandreas’ right hand. She had just grown accustomed to seeing them together, as they almost always were when Yan interacted with Sandreas. But, of course, she hadn’t been following Sandreas to his official duties until just this moment, so she wouldn’t have seen them apart. 

The food was delicious, and Yan was able to hold up polite dinner conversation, when she was spoken to. Luckily, everyone seemed to understand that since she and the others had only been Sandreas’ apprentices for a few weeks, engaging them in anything other than mundane questions about their lives would have been pointless. And it was likely that Governor Runwest knew how to be appropriately subordinate to the Imperial government, and would not perform any political maneuvering at the dinner table, as other governors might have been wont to do. Emerri, being the capital of the Empire itself, was in a unique position of power and influence, but at the cost of being nearly wholly subsumed in interplanetary affairs by the fact that the Imperial government made its home there.

There would be plenty of time for other governors and guests to make moves after dinner. As soon as the main meal was over, the assembly turned into more of a general party, with drinks and dancing, with a band playing elegant music.

Yan wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do with herself, as after dinner Sandreas got up from the table and went off to talk to people, leaving Yan, Kino, and Sid by themselves.

“Are we supposed to talk to people?” Yan asked.

Sid shrugged. “Maybe.” He turned to Kino. “I liked what you did on stage, earlier.”

She looked at him with a blank stare. “Why?”

“You own the fact that you’re a bad omen. I get that.”

“I’m not a bad omen,” Kino said, voice flat. “I’m just not from Hanathue.”

“You lived there, though, didn’t you?” Yan asked. “Besides, Sid, I’m sure no one heard her. Not over the applause.”

He wrinkled his nose. “I could pick it up,” he said, and tapped his glasses. “And anyone who could read lips would see.”

“I only lived there for a few years,” Kino said. “I’ve lived on Emerri much longer than I lived on Hanathue.”

Sid rolled his eyes. “Going to school on Emerri does not make any of the three of us  _ from _ here.”

“I know. That’s why I said I’m from Falmar.”

“I don’t think it matters,” Yan said. “Sandreas probably just didn’t want people thinking about--”

“He was just talking about his mistakes,” Sid said. “If he’s going to talk about his mistakes, he might as well own that one.”

“I already know the lessons of Falmar,” Kino said. “He doesn’t have to teach them to me.”

Yan and Sid shared a glance. “Yeah,” Yan said. “I guess so.” She looked at Kino, the way she was picking the embroidered border out of one of the fancy napkins on the table. She wondered if God had put Kino here, as punishment and a lesson for Sandreas. If she had voiced that thought aloud to the masters at the Academy, they probably would have assigned her some kind of punishment or extra reading, but it was the kind of thought that she couldn’t help but have. It seemed fitting. She wondered if Kino herself saw things that way.

Sid seemed about to say something else, but was interrupted by someone approaching their table. It was Yuuni Olms, Guildmaster Vaneik’s apprentice, and she was smiling broadly at the three of them.

“Congratulations on your formal introduction to society,” she said.

“Thanks,” Sid said. He squinted at her, then signed, “You’re a spacer. You sign?”

Olms, surely not expecting to pull her knowledge of technical sign out at dinner, fumbled a moment and then signed back, “A little.”

Sid nodded, already bored of her.

“I was wondering,” Olms said, voice curious, “If you’d like to dance, Apprentice BarCarran.”

“Oh, um,” Yan glanced around. Sandreas was nowhere to be seen, and she normally would have asked his permission. Sid was clearly trying to hide a grin, and Kino was unaffected, staring out across the party and paying Olms almost no attention. “I guess so.”

“Excellent,” Olms said. She held out her hand as Yan stood. “Thank you for the honor.”

“It’s hardly an honor,” Yan said, taking the extended hand and allowing Olms to lead her out to the dance floor. She was a tiny bit taller than Yan, and was wearing a smart blue suit, rather than a cassock. They found a place on the dance floor and easily began the first few steps of the dance.

“Oh, I think it is,” Olms said. “Not everyone gets the chance to dance with someone who might lead the Empire, someday.”

“You might as well dance with Kino,” Yan said. It wasn’t entirely clear if Olms was actually trying to flirt with her. Yan worried briefly about how this would look, on the cameras. There were reporters taking photographs of the event, and Yan was sure that she, as Sandreas’ new apprentice, would feature heavily, especially if she was dancing with Guildmaster Vaneik’s apprentice.

“You’re trying to get rid of me so soon, Apprentice BarCarran!”

“No,” Yan protested, and Olms just laughed at her. “And you can just call me Yan.”

“I couldn’t dance with Apprentice Mejia,” Olms said.

“Why not?” Yan glanced behind herself, looking at Kino sitting alone at the table. She wondered where Sid had gone.

“Too short,” Olms said. “I wouldn’t know where to put my feet to not step on her.”

Yan did chuckle at that. “Do you dance a lot, on the Guildmaster’s ship?”

“Enough,” Olms said. “I think we’re busier than average. My father certainly hosted more parties than Ungarti does.”

“Is your father the captain?”

“Yes,” Olms said with a smile. “Banmei. What relationship is your captain to you?”

“First cousin once removed,” Yan said. “But he was close with my mother, so he likes me more than he probably should.”

Olms laughed. “Oh, I’m sure he likes you on your own merits just fine, Yan.”

“Perhaps.” They separated briefly for one of the steps in the dance, then came back together.

“Why don’t you think your captain likes you for your merits?”

“My merits aren’t exactly those of a spacer,” Yan said. “I’ve only spent summers on his ship for the past ten years.”

“It’s in your blood,” Olms said. “I’m sure your captain would not like you if he didn’t think you brought anything to the family.”

“I feel like…”

“What?”

Yan considered her words. “I kept having this nightmare, over the summer. I was on the  _ Dreams _ , but I was about to disembark to go back to school. And when I was saying goodbye to Captain Pellon at the door, he would tell me something like, “Remember, you don’t have the family name when you’re not on the ship.’ It was a stupid dream.”

Olms laughed. “Oh, trust me, I get it. Whose family name would you take?”

“I don’t think my dream self thought that far,” Yan said. “First Sandreas’, I guess. Or maybe my friend would give me hers.”

“Friend?”

“Just someone from the Academy,” Yan said. “She works in the IKRB now. But we were going to live together, before I took this apprenticeship.”

Olms made a slight face, one that Yan couldn’t quite interpret the meaning of. “I had that kind of thought when I was first taking Ungarti’s apprenticeship,” Olms said. “Since I was living on his ship-- and the apprenticeship is supposed to be like family-- I considered asking my father if I should take the Vaneik name.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Oh, it would have upset my father. And I realized it was stupid, you know. If I want the Vaneik name, I should marry into the family, properly.”

“Oh.”

“Certainly Ungarti would like me to do that.”

“Really? Who?”

“His son, of course,” Olms said. “Wil.” And this expression, Yan could interpret: clear distaste.

Yan’s brow furrowed. “Doesn’t he get…?”

Olms laughed aloud. “Oh, I’ve told him to his face that he’d have more luck getting Nomar to marry his son than he would getting me to do it, but he doesn’t really understand. He says his father managed to keep a wife, after all.”

“I see,” Yan said. She had less desire to gossip about the former guildmaster than Olms did.

“Ungarti has complained to me on more than one occasion that he told First Sandreas to take a wife and look respectable, but he wouldn’t listen. It apparently grates on him to this day that Sandreas refused.”

“Why does he care?”

Olms hesitated for a second. “My master does not like to think that sensitives are in some way different from him. I think-- well, it doesn’t matter what I think-- but it’s why he was talked into taking apprentices, even though by all rights he shouldn’t have them, and why he wants First Sandreas to--” She shook her head. “His father had a wife to appease his grandfather, but he had a ‘friend’ in every port of call. Dealing with how much the Vaneik men want to live up to their father’s legacy is not a burden that I want to bear, and so I’m glad that I won’t be able to bring myself to marry Wil.”

“And your father?”

“My father tells me he is proud that I carry the Olms name, and will happily welcome me home when my apprenticeship is done.”

“You won’t stay with Guildmaster Vaneik?”

Olms’ smile was thin and sad. “This apprenticeship has been… I won’t say for nothing, because it has been valuable and enriching, and I’m sure when I return to my father, the doors of professional connections that it has opened to me will be worth quite a lot. But when I accepted it, I accepted it knowing that there was no way that someone whom Ungarti considered an Imperial puppet would ever become his chosen successor, and I accepted it knowing that I would be missing out on the connection of a true apprenticeship. Ungarti is many things to me, but he is not, and never will be, a sensitive.” Olms paused. “I’m rather jealous of you, actually.”

“I’m sorry,” Yan said.

“It’s fine.” Olms smiled. “I’ll become a captain, someday. That will more than make up for all of this.”

Yan nodded. “I’ll be jealous of you, then,” she said.

“Good,” Olms said. She spun Yan under her arm in the next dance step. “By the way, Ungarti wants to talk to you.”

“About what?” Yan asked. This conversation with Olms had been pleasant enough, but she was suddenly nervous about speaking to the Guildmaster. She wondered if Sandreas would even want her to do such a thing.

“If I’m being honest with you, Yan,” Olms said, “I’m sure he’s going to try to convince you to be a Guild puppet, to make up for how everyone considers Nomar and I to be Imperial puppets.”

“Are you?” Yan asked. She looked again at the fact that Olms, despite being a sensitive, was not wearing a cassock.

“God, no,” Olms said with a laugh. “Life would be a lot easier if I was.”

“What should I do?”

“You’re asking me for advice, Yan? That seems dangerous. But just go talk to him. He doesn’t bite, I promise.”

“Okay,” Yan said. “If he really wants to speak to me.”

“Good girl,” Olms said. Yan’s face heated up, and she stumbled on the next step of the dance.

* * *

Olms had told Yan that Vaneik would be waiting for her outside, in the garden that adjoined the large hall. Like the courtyard Yan had been in before, this part of Stonecourt was built with privacy in mind, and even though it was well lit from hanging lanterns overhead, greenery obscured the sightlines and muffled conversations. Yan didn’t doubt that there were probably cameras and microphones hidden everywhere, but it gave conversations an aura of secrecy, which made people more likely to talk, even when they shouldn’t.

At the very least, she was glad to step out into the cool night air from the hot and bright hall. She tugged at the collar of her cassock as she walked, trying to cool down. She had wanted to speak with Sandreas, to ask his permission to talk to Vaneik, before she headed out, but she hadn’t been able to get his attention, as he had been deep in what looked like a very fraught conversation with the governor of Jenjin. So, Yan had been forced to use her best judgement and just head outside.

Not sure where Vaneik actually was, Yan cast her power out around herself, searching for him. She could feel clusters of other people talking in the garden, but knew that Vaneik was supposed to be alone, so she headed towards the single spark she found, the one that didn’t feel like it had a touch of the power on it. There was someone else headed in that direction, and though Yan didn’t recognize the sense, the fact that they were behind her made her think that this was another one of the ‘watchers’ Halen had set on her. She gritted her teeth and ignored it as she headed towards Vaneik.

He was sitting on a bench underneath a tree, holding a glass of wine loosely in his hand, staring up at the stars above, though only the few brightest ones were visible through the haze of the party lights.

“Guildmaster,” Yan said, startling him out of his reverie.

“Oh, Apprentice BarCarran,” he said. “I’m glad you could make it. Yuuni told you where to find me, I assume.”

“Yes, sir,” she said.

“Please, take a seat.”

He moved so that she could sit on the bench, and she did, somewhat gingerly. His face was half-obscured in the darkness. 

“How have you been enjoying your apprenticeship with Aymon,” Vaneik asked.

“I’ve only been in it for a few weeks, sir,” Yan said. “I don’t think I’ve had much of a chance to form an opinion, especially since he hasn’t taken us anywhere official.”

“Well, I’m sure you’ll see plenty of the official duties soon enough, now that you’ve been introduced to the public,” Vaneik said. “I’m asking what you think of him.”

“Why do you ask, sir?”

“Social curiosity,” he said. “I’ll admit that Aymon and I have never gotten along-- I’m sure you gathered that-- so I’m interested sometimes to hear what other people who work with him think of him. And, if you’ll pardon me, I think it would be easier to ask you that, spacer to spacer, than it would be to ask almost anyone else.”

“I’ve been told that I’m not a spacer anymore,” Yan said.

“And who told you that?”

She hesitated. “The pirate.”

Vaneik let out a long laugh. “Oh, I do not envy you one whit,” he said. “That man gives me the creeps. I don’t understand why Aymon has kept him around as long as he has.”

“I think because he trusts him,” Yan said. “He’s strong, at least.”

“The last thing I’d want by my side is a strong pirate. I’m glad I don’t have to be around him much, anyway.”

“Yeah,” Yan said.

“You didn’t answer my question,” Vaneik said.

“Sorry, sir,” Yan said.

“And don’t let the pirate tell you you’re not a spacer anymore. There’s some things that stick with you, even when you’re not in space.” He looked at her. “Your family legacy is a lot more important outside your home than in it, you know.”

Yan didn’t know what to say to that, so she just said, “Yes, sir.”

“You want to do your family proud, don’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I know you do.”

“May I say something, Guildmaster?”

“Of course, Apprentice.”

“I hope you aren’t trying to set me against First Sandreas, here.”

Vaneik’s mouth twitched in a smile. “Setting you against Aymon is the last thing on my mind. I think it’s in everyone’s best interest that you get along with him very well.”

“Why?”

“So that you become his successor, of course. I would not want to do anything that would jeopardize that.”

“You must understand that being favored by you already puts me in conflict--”

“Nonsense,” Vaneik said. “It’s only natural that the First has some favoritism for the place they come from. Certainly Aymon favors Lonn, and your compatriots, Apprentice Welslak and Apprentice Mejia, they’d favor Galena and Hanthue--”

“Kino isn’t from Hanathue,” Yan said suddenly.

“No?” Vaneik raised an eyebrow. “Where’s she from, then?”

“Falmar.”

“Is she indeed?”

“So, Guildmaster, you might have just as easy of a time convincing Apprentice Mejia to be your friend as you would convincing me.” She was aware that she was being listened to, either by the hidden microphones, or by the watcher who had been set over her, so Yan wanted to make it very clear that she was not going to be swayed into doing any favors for the Guildmaster. She cast her power out around herself, trying to feel where her watcher was hiding, and how much exactly she should be projecting.

There. Right behind those bushes, and coming closer. Maybe this person was going to extract Yan from this situation. She tensed up, expecting to perhaps be yelled at.

“I’m not trying to convince you of--”

It was only the fact that Yan was already looking in the direction of the intruder, knowing that they were approaching, that she saw the gun. Her eyes latched onto it, and she thought of nothing, all of a sudden, except the swelling of the power beneath her fingertips, and the power structure that Halen had drilled into her mind for the past few weeks fell into place before her. She leapt to her feet, throwing her hands up as though to physically block the attack, though it was her power that sang in her mind to do it, forming a wall between herself and the intruder.

The man, dressed in the uniform of the Stonecourt wait staff, aimed the gun squarely at Guildmaster Vaneik and fired. But Yan had her power structure in place before the man pulled the trigger, and time felt slow and soupy as the bullet sank into her shield, glowing with heat as its energy bled away, and dropped to the floor.

Vaneik had enough of a chance to react, now, and he, like any true spacer, reached into his jacket and withdrew a knife as he jumped for the man. Yan wouldn’t be able to move her shield to protect him easily, so she did the first thing she thought of, which was to take the power and rip the gun out of the assassin’s hands as Vaneik swung his knife in a great slash. The gun sailed into Yan’s hands. 

The assassin tried to run, but Vaneik was on him, then, his greater height giving him a massive advantage. Yan didn’t know what to do, so she did the only thing she could do, which was to scream, “Halen!” making the sound echo and boom through the air, audible far over the noise of the party and cutting through the foliage of the garden like it was nothing.

She ran towards the Guildmaster and the assassin, who were now wrestling on the ground, the assassin having produced his own small knife, trying to stab it into Vaneik’s eyes with one hand, while keeping his throat from being cut with the other.

“Guildmaster, stop!” Yan yelled. She used the power to pull the knife from the assassin’s hand again, and she winced when the blade slipped across his fingers. He was undeterred, and clawed at Vaneik’s face with his hand, leaving streaks of blood across the Guildmaster’s cheeks.

It was at this moment that Halen arrived at a run, and, as though it was nothing, Guildmaster Vaneik and the assassin flew apart, both trapped in the air. Halen’s power was on Yan’s body, too, and she couldn’t move, except that her fingers uncurled involuntarily from the gun in her hand, and it clattered to the stone ground. She could have cried with relief.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hm... ok there's a lot going on in terms of "what's been changed from the first draft" but so much of what's been changed is "oh hm this is foreshadowing for act 2 nonsense" so I can't talk about that and risk spoiling anybody who hasn't read act 2 already lmao. for those who have. please enjoy New And Improved Foreshadowing. there's like... so much of it. 
> 
> [personal favorite New Foreshadowing: Halen makes Yan drop the gun.]
> 
> this chapter is meant to replace the "yan proves she's competent during training" scene that kino gets hurt in, as well as obviously the assassination scene from the original draft. i'm just trying to condense events and make the ones that do happen more meaningful. it sucks that we don't have halen prove that he's hm. willing to let kino get hurt. early on in this draft, but I'll work in halen's Problems. later.
> 
> yuuni olms, as probably my favorite tertiary character, gets better billing in this chapter, and i think the nomar / wil / yuuni / ungarti drama subplot is slightly better explored earlier here, since it becomes so pivotal later on. maybe it would have been worth it to get a nomar conversation in here, but [shrug]
> 
> yan, stop obsessing over the "am i a spacer or not" question. it's the wrong question and you will literally never get an answer that feels satisfying. sorry
> 
> the yuuni dance replaces the iri dance. sorry iri. she'll show up next chapter, don't worry lol.
> 
> um anyway that's the chapter. enjoy. please let me know what you think, whether you've read the original itsoh or not. I would love to get both perspectives


	8. Sometimes, the Best Answer Is to Stop Asking the Question

Yan was frozen for a moment as Halen took in the scene, easily holding everyone with his own power, which Yan had never seen anyone do before. Not even the masters at the Academy, breaking up fights between students, would have been able to do that, and Halen didn’t even look strained. He bent down to pick up the gun she had dropped, though he didn’t take the knife out of Guildmaster Vaneik’s hand. Vaneik could still move his eyes, at least, and he watched Halen with a mistrust and hatred that Yan could practically feel.

Halen kept the whole assembly held until he seemed satisfied that the scene was secure, in some kind of way that Yan couldn’t quite understand. She could feel his power moving all over, but it wasn’t clear what he was doing. Perhaps he was just checking for more hidden weapons. She wondered just what the actual extent of his power was, as he gently, slowly, released her. Yan stayed frozen for a second, not quite sure that she could move her body, until she felt the unintentional trembling in her hand, and raised it to her face, touching her forehead as though that would offer some kind of reassurance. The Guildmaster and the assassin were still frozen, and Yan hated how this symbolic gesture of trust, or at least cooperation, between Halen and herself, made her feel. Yan looked away, conflicted about the fact that she had called out to him for help.

“What happened here, Yan?” Halen asked. His voice was low and on the edge of gentle, like how one would talk to a frightened animal. She wished that it didn’t work on her.

“I--” Yan began, then took a deep breath. “Apprentice Olms told me to come talk to the Guildmaster,” she said, her voice quivering a little. “We were just talking. That man--” Yan pointed-- “came from over there.” Her hand shook as she illustrated the scene. “And I saw the gun…” 

“Good,” Halen said. He turned, noticing someone else approaching before Yan had registered it. 

Yuuni Olms appeared, sticking her head out from behind the greenery and fearlessly taking in the scene: the knife in her master’s hand, the gun in Halen’s, the bleeding assassin still laying frozen on the ground, and Yan, stiff as a board.

Yan felt Halen release the Guildmaster from his hold, and Vaneik shook himself. “I’d prefer you didn’t lay your hands on me, Halen,” Vaneik said, distaste clear in his voice. But he brushed himself off and tucked his knife back in his jacket without further protest.

“What happened?” Olms asked, standing next to Vaneik and assessing the rest of the scene with a wary eye. She pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and offered it to the Guildmaster so that he could wipe the blood off his face.

“I’ll tell you later,” Vaneik said. “I think it’s time that our party made a graceful exit.”

“I apologize for allowing this to happen,” Halen said. “You may rest assured that I will personally take every effort--”

“I would have preferred to simply kill him and have it over with,” Vaneik said, waving his hand. “I assure you, even if you tell me who sent him--” and Vaneik scowled at the man on the ground-- “it will give me no satisfaction.”

Halen nodded once.

Vaneik glanced at Yan. “Apprentice BarCarran, I do thank you for your assistance.” His eyes flicked between her and Halen. “If there’s anything I can do for you, please let me know.”

“No need, sir,” Yan said. It would have been antithetical to her honor as a spacer to accept a tangible reward, or even offer of future cooperation, for saving his life. The rules of civility between ships in the Guild dictated that there should be no token given for mutual defense against pirates.

His lips quirked up in a wry smile. “Indeed, Apprentice BarCarran. I’m sure I’ll see you some other time.”

“I’ll have my staff--” Halen began.

“I don’t need an escort,” Vaneik said. “I’m certain my own apprentices are capable of getting me back to the  _ Oathkeeper _ unhindered.”

“As you say,” Halen said.

“Where is Nomar?” Vaneik asked Olms.

“Drinking, I believe,” she said.

“He’s been making better use of his night than I have,” Vaneik replied. He looked around him very carefully, with one last lingering glance at the assassin still on the floor, then turned the corner with Olms and vanished from sight, leaving just Yan and Halen. 

She kept looking at the assassin on the floor, wondering what was to become of him. His breathing was shallow, but his face was still. Her mind felt oddly blank, looking at him.

“Are you alright, Yan?” Halen asked.

She twitched, then jammed her hands into her pockets. “Yes,” she said. Even if she wasn’t, she wouldn’t admit that to him, of all people.

He studied her silently before he said anything else. She hated the way his eyes on her made her feel. “If you would like to go home, I can get you a driver,” Halen said.

“I’d rather not,” Yan said. She didn’t know why she automatically objected. The objection just fell out of her mouth. Halen could have said anything, and she would have said the opposite. Even as she said it, she realized that what she really wanted was to talk to Sylva, but Sylva felt like a world away. Still, she wasn’t going to back down. “I think I’ll go inside,” Yan said.

“Of course,” Halen said. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking, but it was suddenly urgent for her to no longer be next to him, so she brushed past him. As soon as she was out of his sight, she broke into a run, heading near-blindly through the garden, away from everywhere she felt other people when she cast out her sense in the power.

She ended up near the rear of the hall, strains of music and conversation coming faintly through an open set of double doors, ones that led into one of the hallways of Stonecourt, rather than directly back to the party itself. Yan hurried inside, down the hallway, until she found a bathroom that was blessedly empty. 

Yan leaned over the sink, catching her breath and trying to steady her shaking hands on the cold porcelain. As she leaned forward, her golden circlet, which she had almost forgotten about, slipped off her head and fell into the sink, making such a horrible loud noise that she almost cried. She stared at the circlet in the sink, then looked at her reflection in the mirror. Although this bathroom had the most pleasing lights possible, Yan still felt almost unrecognizable, with her eyes wide and a faint sheen of sweat all over her forehead. She opened the tap without thinking, belatedly realizing that she was getting her circlet all wet, decided it didn’t matter, and splashed the cold water on her face, rubbing her eyes almost pathetically, though she wasn’t quite crying. 

She couldn’t have explained even a fraction of what she was feeling in that moment, not to anyone. 

The door opened. Yan jumped, grabbing her wet circlet out of the sink and clutching it as she whirled to look at the intruder. If she had been thinking straight, she would have kept the door shut with the power, but she hadn’t been, and now--

It was just Kino, stepping in and closing the door behind her. She stared at Yan with her own dark eyes. “I was looking for you,” Kino said.

“Why?” Yan asked, trying to relax a little. Kino was safe, Yan thought, even if she could be a little disconcerting. She at least was in the same ship as Yan. They were on a team.

“I heard you yell. But I couldn’t tell where it was coming from.”

“Oh,” Yan said. “Sorry about that.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yes,” Yan said. “I’m fine.”

“What happened?”

So, haltingly, Yan described the whole incident to Kino, who listened without reacting, aside from completely ripping the button off the sleeve of her cassock. Yan wondered if she would be in trouble for that. Kino stuffed the offending button into her pocket as Yan finished her story. “So Guildmaster Vaneik left, and I came here just to… You know.”

“Where did Halen go?” Kino asked.

“I don’t know,” Yan said. “Did you look for him with the power?”

“My range is bad right now,” Kino said. “That’s why I couldn’t find you.”

“Because of the party?” Yan asked. Too many people in a small space could make finding an individual difficult sometimes, though Yan rarely found it to be a bother.

Kino looked at her out of the corner of her eye. “No,” she said. She fished around in her pocket for a second and pulled out a small tin of mints. She opened it, then did something else to it, and a few of the mints dropped on the floor, which Kino ignored as she poked at it with two fingers, and then held up half a pill, its green color looking sickly under the warm bathroom lights. She offered it to Yan.

“What is that?” Yan asked.

“Vena,” Kino said, the flatness of her voice coming across as nonchalance. “You can have it.”

Yan was horrified, and she took a half step back, knocking her hip on the sink. “What the fuck are you carrying around vena for?” she hissed, turning her head as though someone else could be listening. Her voice felt echoey and terrible in the bathroom, now that the subject had turned.

“It takes the edges off,” Kino said. “You can have it.” She offered the half pill to Yan again.

“No,” Yan said. “I don’t-- you’re going to get in so much trouble with Sandreas for that.”

“He knows,” Kino said. She put the pill away, and the mints tin went back into her pocket.

“What do you mean, ‘he knows?’”

“I let one of Halen’s people follow me, over the summer, last time I bought some,” Kino said. “He knows exactly what I was doing. I’m sure he’s searched my room.”

“Fuck,” Yan said. She rubbed her temple. “Kino-- that’s going to get you killed.”

“I don’t take enough to make me not able to use the power,” Kino said. She demonstrated, tugging the circlet out of Yan’s hand with the power and hovering it back onto her head. Yan shook her head, and it landed crooked. 

“But it’s dangerous,” Yan said.

“I’m used to it,” Kino replied.

“And illegal.”

“So?”

“Fuck, Kino…” Yan shook her head.

“Are you going to cause me a problem?” Kino asked, tilting her head curiously. 

“You say Halen knows and doesn’t care,” Yan said, scowling.

“Yes.”

“Because he’s a pirate.”

“He’s not a pirate,” Kino said.

“He’s not a pirate like you’re not from Hanathue,” Yan said.

Kino just stared at her. “Are you going to cause me a problem?”

Yan scrunched her eyes closed. If they had still been students at the Academy, she would have been more tempted. But Kino, despite the fact that this was the worst way to go about it, had been trying to do her a favor, and who would Yan report it to anyway? She shook her head. “No,” she said. “I won’t.”

“Thank you,” Kino said.

Yan sighed. “Why do you… You know what, nevermind,” Yan said. “I don’t want to know.”

Kino nodded. She looked at Yan, seemingly on the verge of saying something else, opening her mouth and then closing it again. 

Yan wasn’t sure if she wanted to hear Kino try to defend herself, but she asked, “What?”

“Where did Halen go, with the assassin?”

It was an unexpected question. “I don’t know,” Yan said. “I assume he turned him over to, you know, like…” Even as she said this, the words felt false in her mouth. The way Halen had told Vaneik that he would find out who was behind the attack, and the way that he hadn’t even batted an eye when Vaneik had said that he would have preferred to kill him… Yan’s stomach turned for a second. “What do you think he’s doing with him?”

“He’s out of my range,” Kino said. “I’m just curious.”

“Why?”

Kino tilted her head. “Don’t you want to know? 

“Know what?”

“We have to learn what this job entails eventually.”

Yan frowned. “I’m sure Sandreas will tell us everything that we need to know.”

“You’re going to go ask him what’s happening to that man? And you’re going to trust what he says?”

“Why would he lie?”

“He already lied.”

“About Falmar? That was for…” Yan’s voice trailed off. Kino was just staring at her, with that odd, blank expression of hers. It was so unreactive that Yan was compelled to project her own meaning onto it. Kino might not have been silently judging her for not wanting to investigate, but Yan had to imagine that she was, and feel guilty about it. Yan looked away, disconcerted.

“You should go home,” Kino said, after a second of silence.

Yan scowled. “Halen told me that, too.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I don’t know,” Yan said.

“I’m going to look for him. If you don’t want to come, you don’t have to.” She turned towards the door, then went out. 

Yan hesitated for half a second, then said, “Wait, Kino! I’m coming.”

The smile that Kino gave her when Yan stepped up to her shoulder was small and stiff, but Yan had to think that it was genuine. 

“Can you feel him?” Kino asked.

“Should we bring Sid?” Yan asked, not answering the question.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“He’s with First Sandreas.”

“Oh,” Yan said. “Alright.” She had a momentary thought that she should verify this, since Kino might just not want to bring Sid along for her own reasons, but then decided that Kino’s unprompted confession of drug use meant that Kino was unlikely to be lying. She didn’t seem the type. Instead, Yan swept her power out, seeking out the now-familiar feeling of Halen. She could feel him, further into the building, and far below their feet, in one of Stonecourt’s sub-basements. She reported his location to Kino, and Kino started confidently walking down the hallways.

Yan kept sending out little pings of power, just to make sure Halen wasn’t moving. He wasn’t. There were plenty of other signals of people near him, which would mean that they unfortunately wouldn’t be able to sneak towards him without being observed. But that was alright. Yan, at least, wasn’t really trying to be sneaky.

On the edge of her power-sense, Yan caught a sensation that made her stop as she and Kino entered an echoey stairwell. Kino kept walking down the steps, but Yan sent out her power again to check.

“We’re being followed,” she announced to Kino.

“Okay,” Kino said, but she kept walking. Yan followed, hesitantly, and kept glancing over her shoulder, even though the familiar presence following was still fairly far back.

They made it to the bottom of the stairs, exiting into one of the cold and functional basement levels. Yan had never been here before, and all the hallways looked more utilitarian than the upper levels, even the ones where things like the training facilities they had used before were housed. These walls were cold, flat stone, with unlabeled doors, and, after a minute or so of walking, they came to a double door in the hallway that neither of their access cards would open.

“What now?” Yan asked, as she tried swiping her card against the sensor again, in the vain hope that it would do something.

“We can open it with the power,” Kino said. She closed her eyes and put her hand on the door.

“I wouldn’t do that, if I were you,” someone said from down the hallway. Yan had been focused on the problem in front of them, and had not realized that her watcher had come this close.

Yan turned, and Kino dropped her hand. The woman approaching was wearing a green dress, like one of the plainer party guests upstairs. Yan was sure, in fact, that she had seen this woman standing around in the hall, and had assumed that she was part of the entourages of one of the governors. She was tall, though shorter than Yan by a good few inches. Her eyes were as green as her dress was, and she had her brown hair in a loose updo, with a single flower tucked into it.

Yan crossed her arms. “I assume you’re the watcher Halen sent after me.”

“Of course,” the woman said. Her voice was rich and cheerful, and she gave a small bow. “Iri Maedes, at your service.”

“Can you open this door?” Kino asked.

“I can,” Iri said.

Kino moved aside to allow Iri to walk towards the door. “Open it,” Kino said.

“I don’t think so.” Iri smiled, but Kino frowned deeply. “There’s no reason for you to go back there.”

“What’s Halen doing with that man?” Yan asked.

Iri looked at Yan steadily. “It’s important to learn who hired that man to kill Guildmaster Vaneik, why, and if there are any more people who might be about to try the same.”

Yan felt ill, but she nodded.

“Halen is finding that out?” Kino asked.

“Yes,” Iri said. “Most likely.”

“Shouldn’t he be given to… the Yora police, or…?” Yan trailed off.

Iri looked at her. “He may be, later.” Iri’s voice was calm, just like Halen’s had been, earlier. “But Halen is uniquely well qualified to find answers.”

“What do you mean?” Yan asked.

“Didn’t he tell you?” Iri asked.

“Tell me what?”

“Walk with me,” Iri said. “I’ll tell you.”

Yan looked at Kino, then at the door. Kino started walking, following Iri, and Yan followed after Kino. They went all the way up the stairs and were heading back to the party area, though on a different route, and then Iri led them into a small meeting room, one that she used her own security card to open. She leaned against the wall, regarding Yan and Kino, before she said anything.

“Halen has a unique talent,” Iri said. “I’ve been told that lots of sensitives have some special quirk about them, but I wouldn’t know-- do you?”

“Yes,” Yan said. “It’s pretty common.” She shrugged. “I can feel when other people are using the power nearby. Not everybody can do that naturally.”

“Mejia?”

Kino looked at Iri and shrugged. 

“What’s Halen’s ability?” Yan asked.

“He can tell what people are feeling,” Iri said. “He tried to describe it to me, once. He says it’s not exactly like feeling things himself. If he was in here, and I punched you-- he described it as being an echo of the pain. And if it scared you, or made you angry, or any feeling, he’d feel an echo of that, too.”

“Oh,” Yan said. Several things clicked into place: most vividly, the moment that she had first been told that Halen was a pirate, and become afraid-- she made the connection that the instant she had felt that fear run down her back, that was when Halen had turned away from the rest of Sandreas’ entourage to go investigate Yan’s party crashing family. She wondered what Halen could mean by an echo, what that actually felt like.

“So.” Iri shrugged. “He can know very easily when someone is telling the truth or not, among other things.”

“He tortures people,” Kino said, voice flat.

“He does many things,” Iri said. “Some of which, I don’t think you need to see or interrupt him in, at least not right now.”

“Did he send you to stop me?” Yan asked.

“No,” Iri said. “In fact, he told me not to follow you too closely, after our little misadventure a little while ago.” Iri’s mouth was a tight line. “Which meant that I was not watching you when you went to speak with the Guildmaster.”

“I assumed I was on camera.”

“A camera does not stop a bullet,” Iri said. “I apologize for being derelict in my duties.”

“It’s fine,” Yan said, though she wasn’t sure it was. “I don’t know if there was anything you could have done.”

“Maybe,” Iri said. “Maybe not. But I, personally, have resolved to keep a better eye to stop that from happening again. This night has already been enough for you. Let Halen take care of his duties without worrying about it.”

Yan looked at Kino, who had put the blank expression so firmly back on her face that Yan had no idea what she could possibly be thinking. There was no hint from Kino about what Yan should do, so she allowed herself to listen to Iri. “Okay,” she said.

Iri relaxed a little. “Good. Now--”

“I think I want to go home, now,” Kino said abruptly.

“An excellent idea, Apprentice Mejia,” Iri said. “There’s a car waiting for you.”

“What about Sid?” Yan asked, but Iri was already holding the door to walk both of them out.

* * *

It was late, but not inhumanly late, when Yan finally made it back to her room. After the limo ride back to her apartment, which had been dead silent, she had wondered if Kino would speak to her some more, but Kino had nodded curtly at her and had retreated to her own room. Now that Yan knew about Kino’s more unfortunate habits, she had a nagging worry that maybe Kino shouldn’t be left alone, but she also didn’t really want to intrude, or get herself involved. So, she just went back to her apartment and paced back and forth in the living room.

Her project that had earned her this apprenticeship, the fish in its bowl, sat on the coffee table, the fake goldfish matching her movements as she walked back and forth.

She felt like there were fifteen thousand different thoughts swimming through her mind, but she couldn’t do anything about them. She saw all the facets of problems, but was told in no uncertain terms to put them out of her mind. The assassin was Halen’s responsibility to deal with. Kino’s drug addiction wasn’t a problem for her to solve. Whatever Halen considered to be his duty, Yan wasn’t supposed to interfere. Yan’s follower, Iri, would be doing her job regardless of if Yan wanted to be followed or not. There were political machinations happening between the Guild and the Empire that she ordinarily would have been interested in thinking about, but she didn’t even entirely understand them, and didn’t know if she was supposed to. Everything felt so urgent and yet impossible to think about directly.

Yan sat down on her couch, folding in on herself. Here was something that she could do. She could take a deep breath, close her eyes, and bring the power up to the surface of her mind, feeling its presence just underneath her skin. Focused on that, and on nothing else, Yan felt some of her anxiety slip away. In the trance state, so easy to drop into, she could look at her thoughts, one by one, and put them away, to be dealt with later. Iri was right: there were things that were not her responsibility to think about, so she could put them away. Kino, Halen, Guildmaster Vaneik.

She didn’t know how long she was in that trance state, because it always made time feel so strange and fluid. It could have been ten minutes or it could have been three hours; when Yan was deep inside the power like that, she rarely bothered keeping an active sense of the minutes passing. She was jolted out of her meditation trance by the sound of her phone jangling away on the coffee table in front of her.

Yan blinked, suddenly aware once again that she had a body. The dim lights of her living room stabbed into her eyes, and her phone’s ringtone throbbed in her ears. She nearly knocked over her fishbowl as she reached for the offending object, intending initially just to silence it. But she saw that the caller ID said Sylva, so she answered instead.

“Hey,” Yan said. Her mouth was dry and sticky. “Sylva.”

“Did I wake you up?” Sylva asked, voice tinny over the phone.

Yan flopped to lay sideways on her couch, pressing the phone to her ear and staring up at the dark ceiling above her. “No, I was meditating.”

“I saw you on the news,” Sylva said.

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah, I mean, I was watching the Governors’ Dinner speeches. You looked good out there.”

“Thanks,” Yan said. “It’s been kinda a crazy night.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” Yan said. “I met Guildmaster Vaneik and his apprentices.”

“Would I know them from the Academy?” Sylva asked.

“You’d probably recognize them if you saw them.”

“Let me see if I can pick them out from these crowd photos,” Sylva said, and her voice became blurrier as she switched Yan to speakerphone. “I’m looking at news pictures from the dinner.”

“Mmm,” Yan said. Sylva had gotten distracted with this, and so Yan just closed her eyes and waited for her to be finished.

“Who are you dancing with?” There was a strange tone in Sylva’s voice, but Yan was too tired to process it.

“You don’t recognize her,” Yan said. “That’s Yuuni Olms. Vaneik’s apprentice.”

“Oh,” Sylva said. “Okay.”

“She asked me to dance.”

“Why?”

“Wanted to talk, I think.”

“Don’t need to dance for that.”

“She probably just wanted to get me away from Sid and Kino. You know, spacer politics.”

“Did you do any politics?” 

“I mean, what do you mean by politics?” Yan asked. “I don’t even know. I think it’s all…” She sighed. “Olms told me to talk to the Guildmaster, so I did… God, Sylva…”

“What?”

Yan quickly explained the assassination attempt, and how she had averted it, but she didn’t mention anything that happened with Kino afterwards.

“Wow,” Sylva said. “I wish I could have been there.”

“Why?” Yan asked. “I wouldn’t want you to be in danger.”

“I don’t want you to be in danger, either, you know!” Sylva protested. “I would have…” 

“What?”

“Well, I wouldn’t have let you go meet with the Guildmaster alone. What if something had happened?”

“I mean, something did happen,” Yan said. She was tired, and so her voice came out less kindly than she ordinarily would have spoken to Sylva. “I don’t think you would have been able to change anything about it.”

Sylva made a breathy huff through the phone. “Just because I’m not important, I can’t come. Can’t be around.”

“You are important,” Yan said.

Sylva snorted. “Sure. It would be one thing if you said that as Yan of the  _ Iron Dreams _ . But you’re saying that as Yan, apprentice to First Sandreas. That just makes it a lie.”

“Sylva,” Yan said. “Come on. You know I’m not--”

“You didn’t want me to come,” she said. “You could have asked.”

“Next time,” Yan said. “I’ll invite you next time.”

“But I don’t photograph as well as you dancing with Vaneik’s apprentice.”

“I’m sorry,” Yan said. “I didn’t-- I’m sorry.”

“Yeah.”

“I promise, next time there’s a party, I’ll invite you.”

“Okay,” Sylva said. “Fine.” But she was clearly still mad.

“We should meet up this tenday,” Yan said. “I think I’m probably free from training, for a while, at least.”

“Sure.” The monotone, one word responses were killing Yan, but she didn’t know how to solve them.

“Let me know when you’re free.”

“Okay.”

“I think I should go to bed-- it really has been a crazy day.”

“Yeah.”

“Goodnight, Sylva.”

“Night.”

And Sylva hung up. Yan threw her phone down onto the floor, and it landed on the carpet with a dull thud. She pressed her hands over her face and let out a truly undignified groan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yuuni walking into this mess: what in the god damn hell is going on here
> 
> <3 kino and her ridiculous nonsense
> 
> hello iri *w*
> 
> if yan was actually engaging with the things she's sorta kinda learned about halen, she might start to feel guilty that she didn't just let vaneik kill that dude. or at least have a different host of complicated emotions. but. hm. she is not going to do that. the "Oh. wait. me not allowing someone to be killed means that they'll be tortured to death instead" thought has not yet really sunk into her brain. this will never come up again in the future.
> 
> yan and sylva maybe need to sit down and talk about their feelings, but yan is, hm, well. "if I don't think about it, it ceases to be a problem :) " and sylva unfortunately is not very emotionally mature
> 
> i can't decide if it's more or less interesting to be writing this second draft. i think it's definitely a snappier story (though i think at this point we're missing out on a lot of sid/halen/aymon characterization that happened in REV P01... hmmm...) and I also think that having the specific beats of act 2 laid out for me very cleanly allows for me to make connections that weren't there before, and do it in a more thoughtful way. but otoh, there's something very fun and funky about just like, first draft. idk. this is a new process for me-- I've never written a second draft of anything, in my life! 
> 
> I hope both old readers and new readers are finding this interesting. please let me know what your thoughts are :3c
> 
> oh, and i guess i should say: new readers, if you want to zoom ahead, the equivalent point in the REV P01 of this story is [ch 21 ](https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/19912/in-the-shadow-of-heaven/chapter/292408/chapter-twenty-one-just-two-slow-dancers)


	9. Protect Me From What I Want to Know

Vaneik called Aymon on the phone, long after the Governor’s Dinner had ended. Aymon took the call in his rooms in Stonecourt, with his feet up on his desk and Vaneik’s reedy voice over the speaker. Vaneik was back in orbit, on board the  _ Oathkeeper _ , so there was a small but noticeable delay in between their responses to each other.

“I assume that since you haven’t mentioned it, you haven’t found out who tried to murder me yet, Aymon,” Vaneik said.

“We’re trying to trace the money,” Aymon said. “But we haven’t been able to figure out more than that. He has connections to some organized crime in Yora, which was presumably how he was contacted for the job, but he doesn’t know who hired him.”

“Not surprising,” Vaneik said. “Your apprentice should have let me kill him.”

“That would have been a scene,” Aymon said.

“As though it wasn’t already.”

“No witnesses. It doesn’t have to be.”

Vaneik’s laugh was hollow. “Am I to understand that you want me to do you a favor, after I almost was murdered at your party?”

“I would appreciate it, but I don’t expect it.”

“You had best be more careful, Aymon,” Vaneik said. “If your apprentice hadn’t been there, you would have had a new host of problems.”

“I’m sure,” Aymon said.

“I like her, by the way.” It was an almost off-handed comment. “Not that I spoke to the others, but she seems to have a good head on her shoulders.”

“Tell me, Ungarti, did your father have a favorite from among my cohort?”

“Certainly,” Vaneik said. “And it wasn’t you.”

“That must have been a great disappointment for him, then.”

“That the two apprentices with good sense were killed, and the one who was left confides more in pirates than anyone else? Yes, I believe it was. Which was why he retired.” Vaneik sniffed. “It came as no surprise that every decision you have made has been antagonistic towards us, after you became First.”

“Antagonistic? I wouldn’t be so harsh on myself.”

“Of course you wouldn’t. But you have always hated the Guild, for whatever reason.”

“I don’t hate the Guild,” Aymon said. “Just you.”

Vaneik laughed at that, the sound grating and unpleasant through the phone. “I understand that you have your interests, and you understand that I have mine. But I hope that our successors will be able to cooperate.”

“I’m given to understand that your son doesn’t particularly enjoy collaboration with anyone.”

Vaneik clearly didn’t like accusations against his son, because he changed the topic, his voice suddenly sharp. “Regardless of who my successor is, I intend to outlast you.”

“We all intend many things, Ungarti.”

“I should avoid attending any more of your functions, so that I can accomplish that goal. I don’t like putting my life in your hands, which I apparently have to do every time I set foot on Emerri.”

“I apologize,” Aymon said.

“I’m sure,” Vaneik said. There was some distorted sound from the other end of the line. “I’m going to jump my ship. Let me know what you plan on doing about Olar.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“I’ll tell you right now, if one more of my ships encounters pirates in that system, I am going to take matters into my own hands. And you won’t like it.”

“I don’t control what pirates do.”

Vaneik made a dismissive sound. “Enjoy your night, Aymon.”

“Safe travels.”

Vaneik hung up the phone, leaving Aymon in the sudden silence of his office. He pulled his feet off his desk, then stood and stretched, the joints in his back cracking. It was late, but he would wait for Halen to return before he went to bed. 

Aymon poured himself a glass of whiskey, then walked into the living room, staring out the window at the courtyard below and the lights of Yora out over the top of the building. The small moon was moving quickly on its course overhead, and Aymon watched it travel three quarters of the way across the sky as he stood there and sipped his drink, just waiting for Halen to return. Thoughts were drifting across his mind, primarily concerning his apprentices and the politics of the day, but after twenty years of serving as First, and years before that of being First Herrault’s apprentice, Aymon knew very well how to think about political considerations without allowing them to overwhelm him. The matter of Vaneik’s would-be assassin was concerning, but it couldn’t be solved right this moment, and Vaneik probably could be trusted not to elevate this into a huge scandal. There would be little for him to gain from it, anyway.

He would have to do something about Olar, eventually, but he wanted to refrain from intervening for as long as possible. A diplomatic solution would be more elegant than sending a Fleet ship… Aymon took a deep breath and pushed the issue to the side. He would invite the Olar council representative to have a talk with him, later this week. He would find some kind of carrot to offer them, get them to crack down on pirates trading in their system.

Aymon tilted his glass around in his hand, watching how the alcohol caught the light. And Yan. He didn’t like that Vaneik liked her. He would need to speak with her, too.

The door into Aymon’s rooms opened. Halen, of course, could come in without knocking, and he did. Despite how large he was, he moved very quietly, and it was only the sound of the door, and the way his shadowy reflection appeared on the window in front of Aymon that signaled his approach.

Aymon turned and smiled. It was clear that Halen had stopped in his own room for a while, as his short hair was damp from the shower and he was wearing fresh clothes, just his shirtsleeves and slacks, no jacket. “Care for a drink?” Aymon asked.

“No,” Halen said. He looked out the window, tracking the small moon as it dipped below the buildings on the horizon. Aymon looked at him, feeling the same warmth that he always felt when he was alone with Halen.

“I spoke to Ungarti,” Aymon said. “Over the phone.”

“He was taking this fairly well when he left,” Halen said. “Has he changed his mind?”

“No, I don’t think so. He sounded calm.” He took a contemplative sip of his drink. “I think we were lucky.”

“That doesn’t require stating.”

“No, I don’t mean Vaneik surviving,” Aymon said. “I just have the impression-- and tell me if I’m wrong-- if it had been Stonecourt security that stepped in, he would have caused much more of a fuss.”

“Perhaps.”

“You and Ungarti share a favorite among my apprentices.”

“I shouldn’t pick favorites,” Halen said.

Aymon chuckled, then put his glass down on the windowsill. “Of course you shouldn’t. But you clearly taught her well.”

Halen inclined his head, still looking out the window. “I’m glad you think so, though I don’t know how much credit I can really take. Instincts are harder to teach than mechanics, and I only taught them for two weeks.”

“How was she taking things?”

Halen didn’t respond for a moment. “She was understandably shaken, initially.”

“Initially?”

“Maedes reported that she and Kino were about to break in to find me while I was dealing with Wyson.” Wyson was the name of the attacker, one of the few verifiable pieces of information that had been gotten from him.

“Maedes stopped them, I assume? Or did they discourage themselves?”

“She stopped them,” Halen said. “Talked them out of it, anyway.”

Aymon nodded. “Did you tell her to?”

“No,” Halen said. “She took the initiative. She was a good choice to assign to Yan.”

“I trust your judgement,” Aymon said. “If she hadn’t stopped them?”

Halen shook his head. “I am glad that I didn’t have to deal with them.”

“They’re going to have to learn how things work eventually,” Aymon said. “I don’t think there would have been any harm in letting them in.”

“Eventually, Aymon.”

“If they’re curious about things…” He trailed off.

“Forgive me for wanting to protect them,” Halen said. 

“You’re forgiven,” Aymon said. He leaned on the windowsill, his fingers splaying out against the white painted rim, the glass cold against his shoulders even through his cassock and cape. “I suppose I’m protecting them, as well, so we both share some blame.”

On a day when Halen was feeling better, he might have smiled at that, but he just nodded now. “When are you going to take them to the Emperor?”

“When the Emperor demands it,” Aymon said. “And not sooner.”

“I’m surprised that wasn’t tonight.”

“Hah. I suppose I should expect a message that they want to see Yan any day now.”

“You should warn her what it’s like.”

“I don’t think that would help,” Aymon said. He drummed his fingers on the windowsill. “Maybe the Emperor won’t demand for a while. Herrault only brought me there early because… We never felt the same way about the experience, anyway.”

“I know,” Halen said. “Perhaps the Emperor is capable of respecting your pedagogical choices.”

“For whatever they’re worth.” A silence fell between them, and Aymon gazed at Halen, who continued to look out the window at nothing, or perhaps at his own reflection in the dark glass. “How are you, Halen?” Aymon asked after a moment.

“Fine,” Halen said. “I took care of what needed to be taken care of.”

“I know. Thank you,” Aymon said. Wyson was dead; everything that could be learned from him had been learned; what was left of the trail would be investigated. 

Halen’s posture was stiff, and he still wasn’t looking at Aymon. It wasn’t as though Aymon needed to be looked at, but he sometimes wished he had Halen’s gift, to know what the other man was feeling. He knew, on an intellectual level, of course, what Halen must be thinking. But there was a difference between an intellectual knowing that Halen had spent his evening very slowly killing another man-- feeling it himself all the while-- and having an understanding of the feeling, the kind of understanding that caused Halen to stand here, straight-backed and tense. All Aymon could feel was his own tenderness towards Halen, and his unspoken hope that his love was a salve.

Aymon leaned forward and ran his hand down Halen’s arm, until he reached his hand, heavy and sturdy. Halen was still as Aymon lifted his hand, running his thumb over Halen’s knuckles as he did. 

“I certainly didn’t expect the evening to go this way,” Aymon said idly.

“Of course not.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t feel anything from him beforehand.”

Halen shook his head. “He was dressed as staff and hid far away from me. I’m sure he knew what to expect.”

“I suppose we haven’t had the element of surprise in that respect for a while.”

“No,” Halen said. “Maedes told Yan and Kino about me.”

“Hah. Wonder what they think of that?”

“I expect they both think it’s very unpleasant.”

“But you can’t even feel Kino, can you?”

“No,” Halen said. “Not most of the time.” He smiled a little. “It’s a nice change. Even if she doesn’t like it, I don’t have to know.”

“And yet Yan is your favorite.”

“I can’t help it,” Halen said. 

“A pirate who likes my spacer apprentice. Never thought I’d see the day.”

“You never much liked imagining the future.”

Aymon felt briefly uncomfortable at that. “No,” he agreed. 

“Are you worried?”

“You would know better than I,” Aymon said, and he lifted Halen’s hand to his lips, kissing his knuckles. Although it was probably his imagination, Aymon thought he smelled the tang of blood still on Halen’s well-scrubbed skin. Halen touched Aymon’s cheek, very gently.

“You’re not, but maybe you should be,” Halen said.

“Why would I worry when you’re with me?”

Halen said nothing at that, just stroked the grey hair at Aymon’s temple. Aymon took a half step forward so that he could put his hand on the small of Halen’s back and lean onto his broad chest. He could hear Halen’s breath, his slow heartbeat, feel the heat of his body, smell his soap and the light smell of his fresh laundry. Halen’s hand was heavy on the back of Aymon’s neck.

“I hope you’re not worried,” Aymon said.

“No.” Halen’s voice was a low rumble, one that Aymon could feel in his own chest, standing together as they were. He suspected that Halen was lying, but he let it go.

“Good.”

They stood silently for a moment, Aymon simply enjoying Halen’s presence. There was still tension in Halen’s body, in the way that he was holding himself too still, the way his hand’s movements on Aymon’s head and neck were restrained to the point of being jerky, still holding himself back from some echo of the violence of the evening. Aymon would have liked to loosen that restraint, though he wasn’t sure if that was for Halen’s sake, or his own. 

“Tired?” Aymon asked.

“Some,” Halen replied. “You?”

“Some.” Aymon tilted his head up, asking with his eyes for Halen to bend down and kiss him, which he did.

* * *

Halen was gone from Aymon’s bed the next morning when Aymon woke up, which was the way things usually went, though it never ceased to cause him mild annoyance. One of his vices was the enjoyment of a luxurious morning in bed, and another was that his taste in lovers ran towards those who could not bear to linger while there was work to be done. Aymon wasn’t lazy-- far from it-- but there was something to be said for the simple pleasure of not getting up until he wanted to get up. And if Halen had remained there in bed with him, that may have been far later than the duties of the day allowed for. 

Still, he pictured the moment that Halen had woken, perhaps just as the sun was beginning to stain the horizon red. Had Halen laid there and watched him sleep, for just a second? Aymon envied him the pleasure. It was exceedingly rare that the roles were reversed, and Aymon got to watch Halen sleep; the few times it happened were perfect beacons in his memory.

But the duties of the day did weigh on Aymon, and before he got up, he sent a message to Yan, asking her to meet him for brunch. The apprentices were scheduled to have the day off, but that sometimes meant little. 

Yan responded to Aymon’s message while he was in the shower, and he couldn’t tell if her relentlessly formal tone with him meant that she minded the interruption to her day off or not. He met her in his usual dining room at Stonecourt, the one for meals with a small and casual entourage. His apprentices had eaten there with him several times, so it was not Yan being unable to find the room that led her to be a few minutes late; Aymon was already halfway through his iced coffee when she arrived, though he had ordered the food to be held until she made it.

The morning sun was streaming in through the windows, touching the white tablecloths and bouncing light all around the room, glittering on the cutlery and the buttons on the shoulders of Yan’s cassock. The light did nothing to disguise the fact that Yan looked tired, her eyes half-lidded and her smile, professional as ever, wan. Her hands were halfway to the pockets in her cassock, as though she wanted to hide them away, but couldn’t quite bring herself to be that informal, and so instead she was simply wiping her palms on the black fabric with tensed arms. She held herself with a stiffness that reminded Aymon so strongly of the way Halen had stood the night before that he almost commented on it, but instead he just held out his hand and smiled at her to sit.

“I’m sorry for summoning you on your day off,” Aymon said.

“It’s fine,” Yan said. “I know that flexibility is important.”

Aymon chuckled. “This isn’t a job interview, Yan.”

“I know; we already had that.”

She was funny. “How are you feeling?” he asked.

“Fine,” she said. She was glancing out the window at the garden, not looking at him.

“I’d hope that I deserve a little more honesty than that from you.”

The corners of her mouth turned down, but she stifled the frown and said, in a clear voice, “If you want to know how I’m feeling, you should ask Halen.”

“Trust me,” Aymon said. “I do. But he’s not here right this second, and I’m told that it’s difficult to get an accurate read on you when you spend half your energy thinking about how much you hate pirates every time he’s in the room.”

The minute flinch of embarrassment that she gave was amusing. She looked down at her plate. “Sorry,” she said.

“You don’t have to apologize. Either to me, or to Halen. He understands well enough. That’s why I didn’t have him in the room when I spoke with Vaneik, yesterday. He says the way that spacers get antsy around him makes his skin crawl.”

“Oh.”

“Halen likes you, you know,” Aymon said.

“He’s said as much.”

“Do you not believe him?”

“I…” Yan didn’t seem to have an answer. “It doesn’t matter, does it?”

“It matters to me that you’re able to work together,” Aymon said. “But I think you are.”

Their brunch came in then, pancakes and sausages for the both of them, along with coffee and juice for Yan. The momentary distraction interrupted their conversation. Aymon said the blessing, and then they both ate silently for a while. Yan kept sneaking glances at him, as though he wouldn’t notice her looking, and he was amused by it, the combination of silly timidity and boldness. There was no need for either, of course. She was his apprentice; the rules were different.

“He appreciated that you called him for help, last night,” Aymon said.

“I didn’t know who else to call.”

“You were being watched. Stonecourt security was already on their way.”

Yan nodded. “Is Guildmaster Vaneik--”

“He’s fine,” Aymon said. “He’ll keep this quiet. There’s no reason to make a fuss about it.” He sipped his coffee.

Yan hesitated for a second, then said, “What happened to that man?”

“He’s dead.”

“Why didn’t you send him to the courts?”

“What would the courts do?” Aymon asked. “The matter is taken care of. It makes no difference if he was executed by Halen or by a tribunal’s judgement. Assassination is a capital crime.”

Yan looked down at her food, mashing a pancake to a syrupy sludge with the back of her fork.

“Do you disagree?”

“It’s not my place.”

“Certainly it is,” Aymon said. “You, or Sid, or Kino, will rule one day, and as First, you will have unilateral ability to pronounce judgement. It’s only a matter of time before you will have to make choices like this. If he had gone before a tribunal, there would have been endless discussion of the matter, and tensions between the Guild and the Imperial government would be even worse than they already are.”

“I suppose,” Yan said, though he wasn’t sure that she was entirely convinced. “Did Halen find out anything useful?”

“Some. The man was part of a criminal organization here on Emerri. And those kinds of people have ties to pirates; considering as this was an attack on the Guildmaster, and a weakened Guild is good for pirates, I’d say that’s one avenue that’s worth pursuing. But we don’t know much. We’re trying to trace the money.”

Yan nodded.

“Ungarti was complimentary of you, by the way,” Aymon said, neatly cutting and eating some pancake. “What do you think of that?”

“I assume that you know what happened in our conversation,” Yan said.

“I do.”

She seemed distinctly uncomfortable. “I don’t want him to think that I’m not loyal to you.”

Aymon tried not to smile. “I believe Ungarti’s feelings about the loyalty of apprentices are far more colored by his own experience than the truth,” Aymon said. “He might suspect that Olms and Thule are Imperial agents. But I have no problem trusting you, Yan.”

Her eyes narrowed a hair, but she said nothing.

“You have something to say.”

“It’s not complimentary,” Yan said.

Aymon raised an eyebrow. “That only makes me want to hear it all the more.”

“If you trust me, or Sid, or Kino-- why were you watching us?”

“Does it bother you?”

She fiddled with her napkin. “You know about Kino?” Neither of them apparently wanted to directly answer questions.

“I know she uses vena on a fairly regular basis, yes,” Aymon said.

“And you’re not going to do anything about it?”

Aymon considered his words carefully. “There will come a time when she will need to stop, and I’m sure it will be sooner, rather than later. But that’s a conversation that she and I will have, and not something that you need to concern yourself with.”

“Or Halen and her,” Yan muttered under her breath, unable to contain herself.

Aymon laughed. “Yan, I think you can rest assured that I have done more drugs than Halen has.”

She looked up at him sharply. Aymon’s lips twitched in a smile. “It’s not as though I was a stick in the mud in my Academy days,” he said. “And, besides, for pirates, such things are far more valuable than fiat. Halen may have occasionally been paid by the gram, but that means that, for the intelligent, there is value in not getting addicted.”

“Oh.”

“You’re unkind to him,” Aymon said.

“Sorry,” Yan said again.

“I mostly find it funny. You and he are more similar than you are different.”

Yan scowled. “I don’t see the resemblance.”

“It’s easy for me to trust you, not just because you’re my apprentice, but because I understand what the loyalty of those who grew up on ships is like.”

“And you don’t think that makes me too loyal to the Guild?”

“No,” Aymon said, confidence in his voice. “I’m sure that it makes you loyal to your captain, specifically, but he is not here. And, in his place, I am.”

Yan considered this for a second, then nodded. Aymon smiled at her. “You didn’t answer my question,” she said.

“About being watched?”

“Yes.”

“I wouldn’t really describe that as an activity that has anything to do with trust. It’s more about being able to understand and predict the world,” he said. “To prepare myself. If you want to call that a lack of trust, I can understand, but I do not see it that way.”

“Okay,” she said. She seemed uncomfortable, and not like she was going to press him on it.

“God led you to me, or me to you. You and Sid and Kino. That’s the only thing that I need to know to trust you.”

She finally met his steady gaze, then, her eyes appreciatively wide. “Oh.”

“Ungarti doesn’t have that understanding, which is why he believes that not only are his apprentices not to be trusted, but that he can peel off mine to do with as he wishes. I wouldn’t put too much stock in what he thinks. For all his virtues, he isn’t like us in the least.”

“I see,” Yan said.

“Does that reassure you?”

“About that, yes,” Yan said.

“But about other things?”

She finished her cup of juice before responding. “I don’t know,” she said. “I feel like I’m in over my head. There’s a lot that I’m realizing I don’t know, and if I think about that too much…”

“If you weren’t capable, you wouldn’t be here,” Aymon said firmly.

She nodded, but looked away.

“And as for things you don’t know,” he said, “it’s true that there are plenty.”

She looked at him, and her voice was a little defensive. “If I hadn’t gone to look for Halen last night, would you have told me what happened to that man?”

“Would you have asked?” Aymon replied. He could answer questions with questions all day.

There was an odd tone in her voice when she said, “Kino would have.”

“And would you consider that an admirable quality of Kino’s?”

“I don’t know,” Yan said. “It’s hard for me to tell.”

“Here’s what I’ll say, Yan. There are things that I do not think you are ready to know, or at least, things that I am not ready to watch you learn. But, as the theology says, ‘All will be revealed at the appointed hour.’ I won’t have any of you succeed me without knowing all that I have to teach, good and bad. Now that you’re formally introduced as my apprentices, I’m going to start including you in a lot more of the real workings of government. You’ll get up to speed quickly, especially when I start sending you out to work independently, which I hope will be soon.”

She nodded.

“And, I will say, if you have a direct question, I do not have reason to believe that I would lie to you about the answer.”

“Did you think that Guildmaster Vaneik was going to be in danger?”

“No,” Aymon said. “I would never have allowed you to go with him, if I did. I may not like the Guildmaster, but there is great value in keeping him alive, at least until his fated replacement is older and wiser.”

Yan nodded. “Okay.”

“Did you really think that I would send someone to kill the Guildmaster?” Aymon’s voice was amused.

Yan looked away.

“What, tell me what you’re thinking, Yan.”

“Well, you couldn’t exactly have Halen do it.”

Aymon laughed, and Yan was clearly startled, but she cracked a bit of a smile. Aymon considered telling Yan that if he had wanted Ungarti to be dead, he would have done a far better job of it, but then he decided that she did not need that piece of commentary from him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit of a shorter chapter, but Aymon POV is worth having I think.
> 
> uhhhhhhhh idk what to say about this one. 
> 
> Equivalent is still [ ch21 ](https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/19912/in-the-shadow-of-heaven/chapter/292408/chapter-twenty-one-just-two-slow-dancers) in the original draft. though obviously everything here is pretty different lol
> 
> maybe I should have had yan outright question what aymon and halen are to each other. let me know if you think that's worth including. i didn't want their conversation to drag on too long
> 
> as always, I would love to hear your feedback, whether you've read the original draft or not. i feel like... some of the more tender moments from the og draft got cut for time-- i don't know if i'm making all this feel too rushed. it's a big concern of mine lol. so let me know
> 
> um some of this maybe borders on foreshadowing lmao. or at least. "this looks bad, in hindsight" lol. but I don't want to talk about that too much for anyone who has not read the og act 2


	10. Your Last Chance to Disco

The summer slipped fully into fall, and then winter settled over Yora with its characteristic thud, covering the sidewalks with such heavy snow that Yan considered investing in a pair of snowshoes for her walk between her apartment and Stonecourt in the mornings. But even the most brutal winter melted off into a drizzly and cold spring five months-- half a year-- into Yan’s apprenticeship.

Her life had settled into something approaching familiarity, if not routine. She didn’t feel like she was fully secure in her position, not like she saw Sid pretend to be, but she was less lost whenever she learned some new information, or followed Sandreas to some event or meeting. Faces and names, places, events, connections, all started tying together like a web in her mind. She could see, now, the way that members of the Imperial Council talked about each other, the factions that existed, the way that arguments played out, and the way that each side of any issue would try to court Sandreas, carefully picking their words and their battles. 

Before her apprenticeship, Yan had thought of the running of the Empire in vague and indistinct ways. Taxes and transport laws and new colonies and the way that pirates were dealt with were all matters relevant to her as a spacer, so she had followed these things with mild interest, though had always considered them external to her life. After all, one of the exchanges that was made in the Guild’s charter was that, while they were able to operate very independently, they were offered no representation in the Council. So it was up to the Guild, if the Guild had any interests, to curry the favor of individual planets, and ask that their interests be represented. Even when Yan had technically been able to vote on Emerri, she hadn’t bothered exercising that right. 

Now, though, she recognized who the power players were, and she understood some of how she was expected to speak with them as Sandreas’ apprentice. Although she had always had respect for him, watching the subtle way he played the political game, she was almost in awe. She was sure it was just accurate predictions based on gathered intelligence, but Sandreas always seemed to know exactly where the winds were blowing within the Imperial Council, and how to take aside one or two people-- and not even always the loudest voices on whatever issue-- and strike something that resembled a deal but wasn’t.

Although, in the end, Sandreas had ultimate authority within the Empire, he was always careful to make sure the Council operated as the primary law-making body, and not himself. 

“It is vital,” he explained to Sid one day, “that the Council continues to think of itself as a valid entity.”

“Why?” Sid asked, putting his feet up on the coffee table in Sandreas’ office. Sandreas glared at him, and when Sid refused to move his legs, Kino reached over and pulled him sideways, so that his feet returned to the floor with a heavy thump.

“Because the whole system relies on their willing collaboration,” Sandreas said. “The system is fragile, in its way.”

Sid just narrowed his eyes at that.

In the five months of their apprenticeship, Yan only saw Sandreas truly exercise his powers as the Empire’s ultimate authority once. The Imperial Council, with its two chambers, had failed to certify the budget for the upcoming year. Sandreas had called both chambers of the Council together, not allowing them to go to their planned end-of-year recess, and had stood before them in what felt like a blaze of anger.

“If this legislative body refuses to perform its sacred task,” he had said, “I shall have no choice but to use the power vested in me by God and the Emperor to ensure that there is strong continuity of governance. Each of you have a duty towards your constituents; I have a duty to every citizen of this Empire. Even if you neglect your duty, I shall not neglect mine.”

Either the shame or the threat of losing their power had worked, and the budget had been presented to Sandreas to approve, which he had done with only minor edits.

Yan wasn’t sure if she would ever be able to perform this kind of delicate dance, and she certainly wasn’t sure she could summon to her face and voice the righteous fury that Sandreas could wield better than any weapon. Still, at least she took some comfort in the fact that Sid and Kino probably couldn’t do that, either.

She would consider herself friends with the both of them, though she wasn’t sure that Kino and Sid would have considered themselves anything approaching the same. At the very least, Yan liked them, and spending time with them, regardless of Sandreas’ presence, was pleasant. 

Yan had gotten much better at sign, though she still wouldn’t consider herself anywhere near fluent. It was enough to casually converse with Sid without him needing to slowly spell out every fourth word, anyway. Kino hadn’t reached anywhere near that level of mastery, or at least she always seemed uncomfortable the few times she deigned to use sign, but she must have developed some kind of receptive bilingualism, because she watched Sid and would respond aloud to whatever he signed. This saved Yan the pain of having to awkwardly translate, whenever Sid got in a tetchy mood with her.

Life was good, in its own way. Yan was busy, but not so busy that she never saw Sylva. They typically had dinner together at least a few times during the tenday, and Yan often invited Sylva to Stonecourt itself to have lunch, when they could both get away from their duties for a second. She hadn’t yet introduced Sylva to Sandreas, and Sylva’s wrinkled nose whenever she saw Sid and Kino were enough for Yan to make a point of keeping them away from each other, but, once, Halen had stopped Yan in the hallway as she was bringing Sylva to the staff cafeteria.

Sylva tensed at his approach. Yan had told her all about Halen, and so she had inherited Yan’s distrust.

“Good afternoon, Yan. Who’s this with you?” Halen very obviously knew who Sylva was, since she had been coming and going with Yan for months, and nothing like that could have escaped his notice. His small smile could have indicated that he was feigning ignorance for Sylva’s sake, or that he was being obnoxious on purpose. Yan couldn’t tell.

She quickly made the introductions anyway, not wanting to cause a scene in the hallway. “Sylva, this is Halen; he works for First Sandreas. Halen, this is my friend from the Academy, Sylva Calor. She works in the IKRB.” 

“I can tell,” Halen said. “Blue cape. Pleasure to meet you, Ms. Calor. I’m always happy to meet Yan’s friends.” He held out his hand to shake, and Sylva did, wary as ever.

“Pleasure.”

“Did you need me?” Yan asked.

“No,” Halen said, “Just passing through.” This was an obvious lie, and Yan narrowed her eyes. The way he was looking at Sylva made Yan slightly uncomfortable, as though he knew something that she didn’t, and Yan did not like that feeling in the least. There was a very awkward moment of silence in the hallway, the kind that Halen knew just how to draw out into true discomfort. Just before Yan was about to say something, anything, to let the both of them escape, Halen said, “Ms. Calor, perhaps Yan would like to invite you to dinner with herself and First Sandreas, sometime.”

“Oh,” Sylva squeaked. “I couldn’t.”

“Of course you could.” Halen smiled. “Aymon would like to meet you, I’m sure.”

“Maybe,” Yan said. She liked Sylva, and she liked Sandreas, but the thought of those two spheres of her life intersecting made something in her stomach turn. It was already almost too much to have Sylva and Halen meeting here in the hallway.

“Think about it, anyway,” Halen said. He patted Yan’s shoulder with his heavy hand, the gold ring on his finger glinting in the hallway light, then turned and headed back the way he had come, giving lie to his statement about only passing through.

“What was that about?” Sylva asked.

“I don’t know,” Yan said, but it had made her completely lose her appetite for lunch. 

Yan’s usual routine involved waking up early in the mornings, getting breakfast on her walk to Stonecourt, then sitting down at her office desk to read the morning briefing that had been prepared for her. After that, there were any number of tasks that she could be assigned by Sandreas. Most often, she acted as Sandreas’ representative in minor functions where she would not be expected to provide any real input, like sitting in on meetings discussing Fleet strategy at the front, or colonization planning, or attending breakout sessions of the Imperial Council as an observer. Yan got the feeling that these types of things were more for her own education than they were for needing Sandreas’ representative to really be present. She found the colonization meetings the most interesting and she disliked all of the Fleet meetings. After a while, when she found her name penciled in on a meeting invite with Admiral Vaalks, Yan tried to trade away that duty to Sid or Kino.

The one time Sid had taken her up on that offer, Yan had been relieved, but the next day, Sandreas had summoned her into his office, alone. Yan knew she was in trouble from the first moment; when she knocked on the door, it opened with the touch of his power, and the wave of it washing over her felt colder than usual. She stood uncomfortably in front of his desk while he ignored her for a moment, shuffling some papers around. She was aware that this was a power play of his, but that didn’t stop it from working on her. She shifted her weight uncomfortably from foot to foot.

Without looking up at her, he said, “Do you know why you are assigned the duties you are given?”

“To learn,” Yan said.

“If you understand that, then I feel like I shouldn’t have to be having this conversation with you about abandoning them, Yan.”

“I’m sorry.” Even with just this minor telling off, the first one she had had in years, she felt truly wretched.

“Why did you trade assignments with Sid?”

“He is more interested in the Fleet than I am.” It was a half truth, at best.

Sandreas finally put down the papers he was fiddling with and looked up at her. “Sit, Yan.” She did, taking the seat in front of his desk in a hurry. “This would be an easier conversation to have if you had just been skiving off to go on a date with your girlfriend.”

“I-- What?” 

“Shirking responsibilities out of laziness is easier to deal with. But you aren’t lazy. So why is it that you’re not doing the things that I need you to do?”

She looked down at her hands. “I just don’t enjoy the Fleet strategy meetings,” Yan said.

“Why?”

She debated lying. Halen wasn’t in the room, for which she was very grateful, so she might have been able to get away with it, but she wasn’t a particularly good liar, and Sandreas was waiting for her answer. Instead, she continued to look at her hands on her lap, twisting her fingers together. “The pictures of the  _ Lionheart _ ,” she said. “I couldn’t watch that footage.”

The  _ Lionheart _ was a Fleet ship that had been completely destroyed in an engagement en route to the Tyx starzone. Yan had seen the pictures of the destroyed ship, its rocky outer shell breached and trailing wreckage like guts spilling out of a body, and had needed to excuse herself from the meeting where the engagement had been discussed. She had sat in the bathroom with her head in her hands, trying to get the mental image of that happening to her family’s ship, the  _ Iron Dreams _ , out of her mind.

Sandreas was silent for a moment. Yan shifted in her seat, not looking at him. “You understand,” he said, “that in the future, you will not have the luxury of looking away.” His voice was cold, stiflingly unpleasant.

“Yes, sir,” she said, falling back into formality that she had dropped with him long ago.

“You are lucky.” His voice changed slightly, and Yan looked up at him. Sandreas had turned, and was looking at the side of the room, where a photograph was hung, one Yan had seen many times before, of young Sandreas and his own master, First Herrault, along with two other people that Yan assumed were his fellow apprentices. “I learned from First Herrault’s mistakes, and I do not ever plan to send you, or Sid, or Kino, to actively direct a warzone. I don’t think it’s necessary.” Sandreas’ lips were pursed. “I think that had First Herrault not wanted to test us like that, Obra would be your master, instead of me.”

Yan nodded, not sure what to say. 

“But just because I do not plan on sending you to the front does not mean that you can ignore what is happening there. You must understand what is at stake.”

“Yes, sir.”

“The adversary is an existential threat to every single person living within the Empire.”

“I know, sir.”

“I understand that it is unpleasant,” he said. “It is dirty, painful work. But choosing to remain ignorant because you do not like it means that you will be a less effective leader in the future. You cannot choose not to learn the operation of the Fleet, because someday, you may be at its head.”

“I know,” Yan said.

“When Obra was killed, I immediately had to take their place at the front, because First Herrault didn’t trust the Fleet leadership. It was one of her biggest weaknesses, wanting to do everything herself, trusting very few people to act as her proxies.” He shook his head. His tone was quieter, now. “I send you places in my stead already, because I need you to begin to form relationships with the rest of the Empire. You must trust the Fleet leadership; they must trust you. You must trust the Council; the Council must trust you. The same for the Guild, the same for the IKRB, the same for the governors. There’s a reason I introduced you at the Governors’ Dinner-- it was to offer them, and by proxy, all the Empire, a chance to know you first.”

“I understand, sir,” Yan said.

“If you make it clear through your actions that you do not like the Fleet, you will not be able to form those relationships of trust. If you flinch away from the sacrifices that the Fleet must make, you will not be seen as a leader who respects and understands those sacrifices.”

Yan nodded.

“I’m planning to take a trip to inspect the front, very soon. One of the three of you will come with me. I will not demand you come now, but think over what I’ve said.”

“I will,” Yan said. “I’m sorry, sir.”

Sandreas stood, and Yan hastily followed him up. He walked around the desk and put his hand on her arm, a gesture that Yan wasn’t sure if she should interpret as comforting or controlling. Perhaps it was both. He led her out of the room.

Yan kept thinking about Sandreas’s words over the next few weeks, mulling over the idea of visiting the front. She couldn’t make up her mind if she should ask to go or not. On one hand, she had absolutely no desire to go see it, even if it would be perfectly safe. On the other, Sandreas  _ knew _ that she wouldn’t want to go, and so perhaps she should go against her nature and volunteer. She was playing mind games with herself, and still was, when Sandreas asked to meet the three apprentices in his office late one afternoon.

Halen let them into the office, and Yan paid him as little attention as possible as she sat down on the couch between Sid and Kino. There was no sign of Sandreas, and Sid elbowed Yan in the side, flashing her a sign asking where he was. Yan shrugged back.

Kino was more willing to ask Halen, who had silently gone to stand over by the window, looking out at the darkening sky. “Where’s Sandreas?” she asked.

“He just received an urgent message,” Halen said. “He should be back presently.”

“Urgent?” Yan asked. “What about?”

“It was from Guildmaster Vaneik. They’re speaking over the ansible now.”

Yan frowned. A thick silence fell over the group, though Yan thought she was the only one who was made uncomfortable by it. Kino kept picking at the sleeve of her cassock, thoroughly destroying the hem, while Halen stared out the window and Sid leaned back on the couch, a picture of relaxation. 

Sandreas came back into his office about five very long minutes later, glancing at the three apprentices and saying, “Oh, good, you’re here.” He must have been fairly agitated, because he didn’t sit, and instead stood with one hand on the edge of his desk, the other on his chin. He looked at the apprentices for a moment, all three of them watching him for a hint at what they should be doing. “I was going to discuss my plans to visit the front with you,” he said, voice sharp, “but plans seem to have changed.”

“What did Vaneik want?” Sid asked.

Sandreas nodded slightly before speaking, as though he was running down some list in his head. “The Olar situation collapsed,” he said. 

“What happened?”

“One of the ships that has a route to Olar, the  _ Canticle of the Sun _ , was attacked by pirates in the Olar starzone.”

“Did they survive?” Yan asked.

“Yes,” Sandreas said. “They were able to hold out long enough to jump away.”

Yan relaxed back onto the couch. “Good,” she said.

“Unfortunately, however, Vaneik is making good on his promises. He’s temporarily rescinded all Guild charters for ships to trade with the planet.”

Sid and Kino were nonplussed at that, but Yan winced. “That’s not good.”

“No, it’s not,” Sandreas said. “Granted, this was his largest playing card, and he’s clearly hoping to have the situation resolved quickly. His own captains will be unhappy with him if he doesn’t give them their normal routes back.”

Disruption in routes meant disruption in schedules meant disruption in profits; Yan knew plenty about that, and was nodding slowly. “So is he going to just wait for Olar to capitulate?”

Sandreas leaned back against his desk. “Not precisely. Olar making assurances that they were solving their pirate problem has been going on for months now, but they clearly haven’t done enough. He wants us to step in, and put our own pressure on Olar.”

“Does he want you to put a Fleet ship in the system?” Sid asked.

“I think he’s accepted that won’t be happening, unless it’s our measure of last resort,” Sandreas said. “And nobody wants things to go that far. No, he’s probably just hoping we mobilize the forces on the planet with sub-light ships, to chase down anybody who’s trying to land shuttles crammed with contraband.”

“Seems reasonable,” Sid said.

“It’s not ideal. Olar would probably balk at it still, but they’re going to have some time to sit and stew, so by the time that we propose that, or something similar, they’ll probably agree.”

“You’re not going to right away?” Yan asked.

“It takes time to travel to Olar,” he said.

“You’re going?” Kino asked.

“No.” Sandreas’ smile was thin. “Two of you are.”

Sid leaned forward in interest. “Who?”

“I told Yan a while ago that she would have a choice. One of you will be coming with me to the front, to Tyx-III. The other two will head to Olar as my representatives. It should be a relatively easy task, to get Olar and the Guild to come to an agreement. You may decide who’s going where.”

Yan looked at Sid and Kino on either side of her. Although she was still wondering if Sandreas wanted her to go to the front, she had the thought that putting Sid and Kino on some sort of task where they had to work together was asking for trouble. She would wait for them to volunteer themselves. She didn’t have to wait long.

“I want to go to the front,” Kino said.

Halen seemed startled by that, turning away from the window where he had been silently listening to look at Kino. Sandreas just nodded. “Good. Then Yan, Sid, you’ll be heading to Olar. Kino, you and I will be taking my ship, the  _ First Star _ , which means that you two will be hitching a ride with the Guild. I trust that’s not a problem?”

“Which ship will we be on?” Yan asked.

“Vaneik told me that the  _ Sky Boat _ is willing to take you to Olar. Do you know them?”

“Vaguely,” Yan said, trying to wrack her memory for if any member of her family had married into that ship, or the other way around. She was coming up blank, though.

Sandreas nodded. “Well, I’m sure you’ll get along with them just fine. And Sid, I’m sure you’ll be on your best behavior.”

“It’s not like I’ve never been on a Guild ship before,” Sid huffed. “I went back and forth to Galena every summer for ten years.”

“Slightly different when you’re a VIP,” Halen intoned from the back of the room. 

“When are we leaving?” Yan asked.

“The  _ Sky Boat _ will be here in five days,” Sandreas said. “I’m releasing you from all duties aside from briefings until then, so make whatever preparations you need to. And, Kino, you and I will be heading out in two weeks.”

“Why aren’t you going to Olar?” Sid asked, as though the thought had just crossed his mind. “Won’t the Guild see it as a snub?”

“Vaneik will also be sending one of his apprentices to deal with the problem. If it’s a snub to anyone, it’s a snub to Olar, and they’re the ones causing the problem, so they don’t have room to complain,” Sandreas said. “And you’re going, because I think you can handle this. You have to be independent eventually, and this is an easy task, as far as things go. All the pressure is coming from the Guild. You just have to offer a way to relieve it, which I will give to you.”

“What do you think?” Sid asked, turning to Yan and elbowing her again. “Think we can handle it?”

She felt less sure than she sounded when she smiled and said, “Yes, of course.”

“Excellent,” Sandreas said.

* * *

One thing that Yan wasn’t entirely looking forward to was telling Sylva that she was leaving on an extended trip, because she knew that Sylva would not take the news well. The journey to Olar and back, given travel time and how long they would probably need to stay on the planet, would likely take at least a thirtyday, probably even closer to a month. Yan and Sylva hadn’t gone that long without seeing each other since-- Yan did the mental math-- their seventh year at the Academy, when Sylva’s parents refused to let Sylva spend her summer vacation on the  _ Iron Dreams. _

Yan had texted Sylva the next morning, asking if she wanted to get dinner, because there was something that she needed to tell her, and Sylva had texted back immediately.

> yes, I’d love to

> tbh there’s something that I need to tell you too.

Yan didn’t think that she had ever received a less encouraging message, and so she spent the whole day when she should have been studying or packing for her upcoming trip alternating between meditating and watching mindless television.

She had agreed to meet Sylva at a nearby, very nice restaurant. Yan arrived before Sylva did, and sat at their small table near the back, nervously twirling the water around in her glass and watching the other patrons of the restaurant. The place was dim, so she couldn’t see their faces, but the muted sounds of sparkling conversation washed over her with the soft music, and took her out of her own head, at least a little.

Sylva appeared at the door, about ten minutes late. It was the kind of thing that regularly happened, so Yan had been expecting it. Sylva locked eyes with Yan from across the room as she came over, a weird smile on her face.

“Hey,” Yan said as Sylva sat. “Glad you could make it.”

“Sorry for being a little late.”

“It doesn’t bother me,” Yan said, smiling. “I didn’t think you’d abandon me.”

Sylva laughed a little. “I’m glad.”

Although both had told the other that they had something to talk about, it was abundantly clear that neither of them really wanted to mention whatever they were thinking about, at least not immediately. Yan ordered some wine, and when it came, they both raised their glasses to each other.

“Cheers,” Yan said. 

Sylva smiled at her, though there was something uncomfortable about her posture. “Cheers.” She took a sip. “How has your day been?” 

“I don’t know, to be honest,” Yan said. “I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed.”

“Really?” Sylva asked. “You look fine to me.”

“Thanks.” Yan fiddled with her glass some more. 

“What’s whelming you?”

“A lot of things, I guess. First Sandreas has started putting more responsibility on me, I think. Or, it feels like responsibility, even though maybe some of it doesn’t actually have to be done by anyone.” She wasn’t sure she was making sense.

“More Fleet meetings?”

“Haven’t had one of those in a couple days,” Yan said. “I’m glad about that, at least.”

“Yeah.”

“Have you been following the whole Olar thing?”

“Only as much as you’ve told me,” Sylva said.

Yan explained the developments of the situation, though she omitted the fact that she and Sid were going to be travelling to Olar. Although telling Sylva that she was leaving had been the reason she had asked to meet, she suddenly didn’t want to spoil the mood by bringing it up. She was sure that Sylva would be unhappy, and she wanted to at least wait until they had enjoyed their meal. The food came, and Yan quickly wrapped up her drawn out explanation of the Guild’s politics.

“Well, Sandreas should just send a Fleet ship,” Sylva said dismissively. “No pirates would come anywhere nearby if they knew one of those was waiting for them to jump into the system.”

Yan shook her head. “I don’t think he can spare any.”

Sylva pursed her lips, then gestured with her fork. “I’m sure that he could, if he wanted to.”

“Maybe,” Yan said. “How have you been?”

Sylva heaved a bit of a dramatic sigh. “You know how it is.”

“Not really, no,” Yan said.

“My mentor refuses to acknowledge that I am terrible at meditating. Even though the amount of pain that we collectively go through every time she makes me is just so much.”

“You’re not as bad as you make it sound. I’ve seen you do it. You managed to graduate from the Academy, anyway.”

“Barely,” Sylva muttered, looking away.

“And your mentor wouldn’t do it with you if she really couldn’t bear it.”

“Yeah, she has God’s own patience for making me do it, for whatever reason, even if she can’t keep a thought straight about anything else.”

“Do you not like her?”

“No,” Sylva said. “I love her. She’s great. I just suck at my job.”

“You don’t.”

“You wouldn’t know,” Sylva said. “Since you’re good at yours.”

“I don’t know about that,” Yan said.

“Come on, you’re good at everything.”

“That’s definitely not true.”

“Name one thing you’re bad at.”

“Cooking,” Yan said.

“Yeah, that’s because you never do it. Name another.”

“Swimming.”

“Doesn’t count.”

“I nearly failed that painting class we took together.”

“You didn’t ‘nearly fail.’”

“It was a pity pass.”

Sylva laughed, some of the weird mood broken. “Well, maybe we’ll both get kicked out of our apprenticeships for being bad at them.”

“And then what would we do?” Yan asked, wanting to disagree that this would ever happen, but knowing that Sylva wasn’t likely to be dissuaded from her pessimism.

“Your family would take us in, right?”

“Oh, yeah, they would.”

“Perfect,” Sylva said. “That’s our fallback, then.”

“Sure,” Yan said with a smile. “Captain Pellon loves you, so that wouldn’t be a problem.”

“Even though I’m barely tolerable as a crew member.”

Yan chuckled. “I’m sure if we went to live there permanently, you’d be put to real work, and you’d catch on fast.”

“You know what? Maybe our fallback plan should be to go find an out of the way spot in the woods and just build a cabin there, and then nobody could make us do anything.”

“You’re just being lazy,” Yan said.

“And what if I am?” But Sylva was smiling.

They finished their meal and ordered dessert: strawberry shortcake for Sylva, fried ice cream for Yan. Yan ate hers slowly, tapping through the crisp shell with her spoon and then eating the ice cream tiny scoops at a time. She kept looking up at Sylva, wondering if she was going to say whatever she had wanted to talk to Yan about. Sylva, though she speared her delicately arranged dessert much more aggressively than Yan did hers, seemed to be making the same calculation, sneaking looks at Yan and half-opening her mouth to say something, though she never did, and would cram another bite in her mouth to cover the movement. They both knew that they would go their separate ways after dinner, so they were coming up on that unspoken, self-imposed deadline.

Yan couldn’t bear it any longer. Her ice cream was melting into sludge on her plate. “You mentioned that you had something you wanted to talk to me about?” she asked.

Sylva’s face flushed red, her freckles standing out on her cheeks. “You did, too.”

“You first,” Yan said. “Since you won’t like what I have to say.” Sylva looked at her with wide, alarmed eyes, and Yan backtracked a little. “It’s not that bad,” she said. “Just a stupid work thing.”

“Oh,” Sylva said. “Okay.”

There was a momentary silence. Sylva wasn’t meeting Yan’s eyes, looking just off to the side of her, and Yan looked down at her plate to avoid the uncomfortable gaze.

“Promise you won’t laugh at me, okay?” Sylva asked.

“Why would I laugh at you?”

“Because I’m really fucking stupid.”

“No--”

“Yan…”

“What is it?”

And then it all came out in a rush, the words spilling out from Sylva as though she couldn’t contain them. “I think I’m in love with you, and I have been for a really long time, and I just can’t keep pretending that I’m not anymore, and maybe you already knew that, I don’t know, and I know that you probably don’t feel the same way but I just have to say something, because I’m losing my mind, and because I feel like if I don’t you’re going to, I don’t know…” And then she trailed off, voice choked up, still not looking at Yan.

“Oh,” Yan said. “I didn’t know.” 

She didn’t entirely know what to do with herself. Sylva kept looking at her, waiting for some sort of sign or signal, but the spoon was just dangling loosely from Yan’s fingers, and she couldn’t quite look at anything directly. The inside of the restaurant suddenly felt too warm, and Yan wanted to escape from the situation, get away from whatever feelings were churning around in her stomach, unidentifiable.

“I’ve fucked this up, haven’t I?” Sylva said, putting her beet-red face in her hands.

“No-- Sylva-- I just--” Yan tried to say anything to recover the situation, but that seemed impossible.

“I should go,” Sylva said. She fumbled around in her pockets for her wallet, accidentally dropped it on the floor, and by the time that she had finished retrieving it from the floor, Yan had already stuck cash to pay for both their meals on top of the bill.

“I’ve got it,” Yan said. “Don’t worry about it.”

Sylva just nodded, though she was clearly on the verge of tears. Still, she managed to ask, “What was it you were going to tell me?”

“Oh.” Yan still had no desire to admit to it, especially right at this moment, but she said, “First Sandreas is sending me to Olar. To handle negotiations. I’m leaving this week, and I probably won’t be back for a thirtyday.”

Sylva was silent for a moment, half turned away. “Maybe it’s for the best,” she said.

“I don’t want to go,” Yan offered.

Sylva just shrugged, shoulders hunched, then stood. “I’ll see you when you get back, right?”

“Yes, of course.” Yan tried to put reassurance into her tone. “And I’m sure I’ll ansible call you when I get to Olar.”

“I don’t have an ansible card.”

“I’ll get you one,” Yan said. “I promise.”

“Okay.” Sylva’s voice was flat. “Have a good trip, I guess.”

“I’ll try,” Yan said. Sylva started walking away, and Yan grabbed her arm, stopping her. “Hey, Sylva.”

“What?” She looked at Yan with an expression that perfectly balanced on the line between hope and shame.

“Thank you for telling me,” Yan said. She let go of Sylva’s arm.

“Yeah,” Sylva said. “I guess.” And then she ran out, dodging out of the way of the waiter who was coming to collect the bill.

* * *

Yan walked home to her apartment, feeling bad in a way that she couldn’t quite define. Sylva’s confession kept running through her brain, and while she could focus on those words, there was something stopping her from pulling her own feelings to the forefront of her mind. Every time she asked herself the important question, how did she feel about Sylva, she became so uncomfortable that she pushed it away. 

Sylva was the best, and at times only, friend Yan had. They had lived together in the Academy dorms for ten years. They had spent practically all of their free time together for just as long. Until Yan had taken her apprenticeship, that was.

She thought back to how distraught Sylva had been over that, when Yan had told her that they wouldn’t be living together. And she thought, too, about how so many of the times that she had invited Sylva out to eat, or to hang out at her apartment, had been tinged with a kind of quiet desperation, especially when it came time for them to go their separate ways. Neither of them wanted the other to leave, but Sylva more so.

Maybe this was just Sylva’s way of asking Yan to reassure her of her place in her life. That must be it.

Yan took the stairs up to her apartment and encountered Sid standing out in the hallway in his shirtsleeves, eating a slice of pizza and staring out the window to the street. He jammed the pizza in his mouth so that he could sign hello to Yan as she approached.

“Did you see where Kino went?” Sid asked.

“What?”

“Kino. She just left. I wonder where she is going.”

“No, I didn’t see her on the street,” Yan signed. 

“I saw the two of you pass each other.” Sid frowned.

“Are you sure? I would have said hello if I saw her.”

“Yes, I’m sure. I’m deaf, not blind.”

Yan rolled her eyes. “Why do you care where Kino went?”

“It’s not like she has any business going out.”

“She’s allowed to go on a walk.”

“Look,” Sid signed, pointing down the street. “There’s Kino’s minder.”

Indeed, the person who had been assigned to watch Kino, filling the same role as Iri did for Yan, had appeared on the dark street corner, looking both ways as though confused about where Kino had gone. It was strange, but this strangeness had temporarily distracted Yan from her thoughts about Sylva, so that was at least a blessing.

Sid looked at Yan eagerly. “Let’s follow her. See where she went.”

“Her minder lost her. Why would we be able to find her?”

Sid ignored her protest and grabbed her arm, tugging Yan at a run all the way back out onto the street. They headed in the direction Sid claimed that Kino had gone, and just stuck to the main street. Yan, who was not that invested in this, could nevertheless feel Sid using his power to search for Kino. She didn’t think he would find her; Kino was, for whatever reason, remarkably hard to find, in a way that Yan couldn’t quite put her finger on. Once she had caught hold of Kino’s presence in the power, Yan immediately recognized it, and would wonder why it had felt so hard to identify, but as soon as she let go of that feeling, even for just an instant, it went back to feeling as though Kino was invisible, some kind of weird blank spot in the universe. 

Sid dragged Yan along, seeming to have more of an intuition about where Kino was than Yan did. He huffed aloud as they jogged down the street, “I followed her this way once, but then lost her a little ways from here. Maybe she went the same direction.”

Their speed and Sid’s random guesses paid off, because after a minute, they saw Kino cross the road at a busy intersection, neatly dodging in between cars just as they came to a stop at the light. When she reached the other side of the street, she paused, then turned and looked directly behind herself at Sid and Yan. They were too far away to see the expression on her face, but it was clear that Kino knew she was being followed, and when she began walking again, it was slower, allowing Yan and Sid to catch up. They did, running the rest of the way towards her, barely making it across the street before the light turned green again.

“Why are you following me?” Kino asked in her monotone voice, as soon as Yan and Sid were close enough to hear her. She didn’t turn around to look at them again, continuing to march straight ahead.

“You lost your minder,” Sid said.

“I know.”

“Didn’t think we were good enough trackers to find you when she couldn’t.”

“I let you find me,” Kino said. 

Sid glanced at Yan, who shrugged. “Where are you headed?” Yan asked.

“Club Blackstar,” Kino said.

“Is that the club where all the Academy students go?” Sid asked. “Or was that the one on, uh, 28th Street?”

“No,” Kino said. “I don’t know where they go. This is where I go.”

“You dance?” Yan asked.

“No.”

Sid rolled his eyes, but they both followed Kino further and further away from the city center. It was a long walk. Kino was inexhaustible, and kept a steady, fast pace. Yan’s feet ached after a while, and she was cold in the spring night air. Kino, who wasn’t even wearing her cassock, seemed unaffected, though Yan couldn’t see how. Sid had jammed his hands into his pockets to stay warm.

The sound of the club was apparent even before they turned the corner. The music throbbed out in rhythmic thumps, accompanied by neon flashing lights, splashing out into the darkness of the street. There was a long line of people trying to get in, but Kino walked directly up to the bouncer, yelled, “I’m here for Mahmoud,” and was ushered in, along with Yan and Sid.

Although on the street, wearing their cassocks and capes, they had stood out like sore thumbs, the interior of the club was very dark, so they were hardly visible at all. The music was a hammer on Yan’s ears, so loud that she could barely register it as music, but Sid was grinning and stepping in time to the beat, following Kino through the shoulder to shoulder crowd. Kino walked right up to the huge speakers at the front of the room, then waved at the DJ, bathed in green light, who looked up, saw her, then made a “one moment” motion, and jerked his head behind him.

Clumsily, Kino signed, “Be right back.”

“Can I come?” Sid asked.

“No.”

Kino immediately turned and vanished into the crowd, leaving Yan and Sid by themselves. Sid was still grinning at Yan. “Want to dance?”

“I hate it here,” she signed back. “Too loud.”

“Let’s dance,” Sid insisted.

Yan didn’t have the mental presence to argue with him, so assaulted was she by the noise. Sid pulled her into the crowd, away from the speakers just enough that she could think. He put his hands up, dancing in a very naive, though not clumsy, way, urging her to move with him. They were mere inches apart, pressed together by the heavy crowd of anonymous bodies, pushed and pulled with the rhythm of the music.

Yan looked at Sid. She could feel his power reach out towards her, an invitation. There wasn’t enough space for Yan to sign to him and she didn’t want to try to yell over the music, so she was forced to grab his hand, speaking to him through that physical connection in the power. “What about Kino?” she asked mentally.

“Who cares? Come on, Yan.”

She thought briefly of Sylva as Sid was pushed against her, chest to chest, and maybe it was her desire to not think about that, or the fact that she couldn’t bear the noise in the club alone, but she nodded.

They moved in tandem, hands together. Yan closed her eyes against the flashing lights, and then it was just her and the throb of the music in her bones, and Sid right there next to her, hot and alive, his power touching hers, letting her in.

And then they were together, sharing that meditative space that Yan was only ever used to using in quiet contemplation with someone else, not here on the dance floor. Sid took some control of that mental space, and the sound of the club vanished, replaced by a blessed-- if strange-- dead silence. Yan was fixated on that for a second, and then noticed the way that Sid felt the music, the hum in the soles of his feet with the music’s bass, urging him to move, the visual rhythm of every dancer on the floor moving together.

Yan, the more experienced dancer, controlled their movements, totally synchronised. Sid was laughing, or maybe it was her who was laughing, the sound coming out of one of their mouths, or both, registering as a huff of breath out of their noses, Sid’s grin on both their faces.

_ I should have gone to those Academy parties, _ Sid said in their shared mental space, accompanied with an image of what he supposed they looked like. It was rather inappropriate. Yan pushed it back and offered a fear about getting in trouble, and he returned a mental shrug and wink.

_ You ever dance? _ Sid asked.

A memory rose to Yan’s mind, her whole family stomping and whirling in the  _ Iron Dreams _ ’ mess hall, all the tables pushed to the side of the room, her uncle Maxes making his fiddle shriek and wail, Captain Pellon sounding out the verses with his authoritative voice, Yan tripping over her younger cousins as they rushed onto and off of the makeshift dance floor. It was a memory from the summer, and Sylva had been there, standing on the edge of the room, not quite sure how to join in the festivities, and Yan had grabbed her by both hands and spun her around and around and around.

The memory was a tender one, and, although it came from Yan, she tried to shy away from it once she realized exactly how tender it was, the way her mental gaze had lingered on Sylva standing uncomfortably at the edge of the party, how she had noticed her auburn braids catching the light.

_ What’s the matter? _ Sid asked.

Unbidden, the image of the dinner she had just left came to her head, along with the gnawing dread that she had destroyed something precious rose up within her.

_ You idiot, _ Sid said, but left it at that.  _ Look, there’s Kino. _

Indeed, he turned both their heads to look at her, emerging from a dark doorway near the stage. She pushed her way through the crowd, ducking under elbows and dodging knees, ignoring with a flat stare anyone who tried to touch her.

She recognized immediately that Yan and Sid were sharing a mental space, and Yan was moved to offer her a hand, not wanting her to feel left out, though she could feel Sid laughing at her. 

_ She doesn’t care _ , Sid said.

“Join us?” Yan asked aloud, still holding out her hand to Kino, who was standing stiff as a board among the swaying mass of bodies.

“Do you want me?” she asked. Yan, for the first time, realized how Sid was able to understand spoken language. Seeing through his eyes, the words Kino had spoken appeared projected on his glasses: subtitles. She was momentarily distracted by this, and Sid offered her a diagram of how they worked, though Yan pushed it away in order to focus on answering Kino’s question.

“Yes,” she said.

Kino considered for a second, then took Yan’s hand, closing her eyes and moving ever so slightly to the rhythm of the music. She slipped into the meditation with them quickly, though it was odd-- it was as though she was there and not there at the same time. Yan could see through her eyes when she opened them, and Kino’s body moved in synch with her and Sid, but touching Kino’s mind was like attempting to look through the dark glass of a two way mirror. There was nothing there but Yan’s own curious intentions, until Kino noticed Yan trying to look, and a dark amusement flashed onto the surface of the glass, though it felt somehow as though it was coming from Yan herself, the foreign feeling rising up inside her, reflecting in the mirror what Kino wanted her to see.

_ There’s nothing to it at all, _ Kino thought, or Yan thought-- she couldn’t really tell.

Sid was unaffected by this strangeness.  _ What did you come here for? _ he asked.

Sid’s hand reached into Kino’s pocket, and all three of them felt his fingers close around the bag of pills. Yan shivered with disgust and pulled Sid’s hand away so that she wouldn’t have to touch it anymore.

_ Let’s just dance, _ Yan thought. And, although the mental voice saying it hadn’t quite been hers, the mirror image’s lips moving without her speaking, she couldn’t help but agree.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a rework of several scenes from several different chapters in the original version, but honestly none of them are anything like this version so it's not even worth trying to pick apart what the originals were lol
> 
> i hope the beginning few shorter scenes work well to show just snippets of interesting things in the timeskip. I didn't want to linger on any of that b/c it's not super vital, but I thought it would be good to show bits of things happening idk.
> 
> who's ready for yan and sid's epic adventure? they sure as fuck aren't lol. anyway, we've had a lot of kino time b/c i think it's important, especially since the next arc is going to be yan and sid hanging out. it's tough to balance the both of them, which i feel like has meant sid has been slightly neglected thus far? sorta the opposite of the orignal draft where he got a TON of screentime. most of that got cut b/c it was dragging the pace to an absolute crawl lol
> 
> anyway, hope you enjoyed the "three people who really should not go clubbing go clubbing" chapter lmao
> 
> chapter title is from "Believe Me Natalie" by the killers.


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